COVER : ALICE GARNER

AND BEN MENDELSOHN

IN LOVER BOY.

R E G IS T E R E D BY A U S T R A L IA POST P U B L IC A T IO N NO. VBÌ

H e a d i n g f o r t h e f u t u r e

On July 4th 1988 we announced our independence. The day Atlab Australia seceded from its union with the Australian Television Network

And nowwe’d like to announceOn Monday March 6th, 1989 Atlab Australia will be operating from new, larger and more centrally located premises at Artarmon.Please noteOur new address will be 47 Hotham Parade Artarmon NSW 2064, our phone number will be (02) 906 0100, Fax number (02) 906 2597 and Telex AA 170917One thing hasn’t changedAnd that's our commitment to excellence.For over 25 years we've been working with the film and television industry, supplying the kind of post production services that has made us one of the best in the business - Not only in Australia - But overseas.As we head for the future - You may rest assured we will continue to provide the equipment - the people and the dedication to perfection that is ATLAB.

âdlâbà u s l r d i d v

Altab Australia. Fully integrated post production facilities for film and video including laboratory and sound mixing.

(MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED)

I N C O R P O R A T I N G F I L M V I E W S

S E P T E M B E R 1 9 8 9 N U M B E R 7 5

COVER: ALICE GARNER AND BEN MENDELSOHN IN GEOFFREY WRIGHT'S LOVER BOY. SEE PAGE 59

c o n t e n t s

2 BRIEFLY: NEWS AND VIEWS

4 SALLY BONGERSInterviewed by Mary Colbert

10 THE TEEN COMMANDMENTS'-Why bother with the teen movie? by Adrian Martin

16 AUSTRALIA ANIMATEDCraig Monahan interviewed by Chris Brophy, Geoff Gardner, Paul Harris

20 FEAST OF EDENSLooking at Edens Lost by Liz Jacka

p u b l is h e r Patricia Amad

ed it o r Philippa Hawker

t ec h n ic a l ed it o r Fred Harden

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a d v e r t is in g Patricia Amad,

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ed it o r ia l b o a r d Kathy Bail,

John Baxter [USA], Chris Berry,Rod Bishop, Ron Burnett [Canada],

Annette Blonski, Raffaele Caputo,

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ham, Debi Enker, Brian McFarlane,

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COPYRIGHT 1989 MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED.

Signed articles represent the views of the authors and not necessarily that of the editor and publisher. While every care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied to the magazine, neither the editor nor the publisher can accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the copyright owners. Cinema Papers is published every two months by MTV Publishing Limited, 43 Charles Street, Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia 3067 .Telephone (03) 429 551 1 . Fax (03) 427 9255 . Telex AA 3 0 625 . Reference ME ME 230.

NEXT ISSUE ON SALE NOVEMBER 1

26 LAMBERT TO THE SLAUGHTERMary Lambert directs Stephen King, by John Baxter

30 BLOOD BROTHERSScorsese, Schrader and the cult of masculinity, by Lorraine Mortimer

38 HOLLYWOOD MAVERICKEdward R. Pressman interviewed by Paul Harris

44 FILM MATTERS / TAKING TIME OUTSydney and Melbourne Film Festivals, by Hunter Cordaiy and Raffaele Caputo

50 TECHNICALITIESAlbert Digital Studios, and Underwater Housing, by Fred Harden

55 TV SCANNERSTelevision critics' ratings

56 FILM REVIEWSSweetie by Anne-Marie Crawford and Adrian Martin; Dead Poets Society by Brian McFarlane;Bonza and Lover Boy by Lyn McDonald;Batman by Rod Bishop;Georgia by Paul Kalina;New York Stories by Raffaele Caputo

64 BOOK REVIEWS:Acting in the Cinema and Masters o f Starlight

69 PRODUCTION SURVEY

80 CENSORSHIP LISTINGS

• CENTRE SECTION:CINEMA PAPERS READERSHIP QUESTIONNAIRE

JOHN BAXTER is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles; ROD BISHOP is a senior lecturer at Phillip Institute of Technology; CHRIS BROPHY is Publicity Officer at the State Film Centre, Melbourne; RAFFAELE CAPUTO is a freelance writer on film; MARY COLBERT is a freelance writer and researcher; JOHN CONOMOS is a freelance writer on film;HUNTER CORDAIY is a writer and lectures in Mass Media at NSW University; ANNE-MARIE CRAWFORD is a freelance writer on film; GEOFFREY GARDNER is Director, Theatrical Distribution at Ronin Films, which is distributing Animated; FRED HARDEN is a film and television producer specializing in special effects; PAUL HARRIS is a freelance writer on film; LIZ JACKA is the author of several books on film; PAUL KALINA is a freelance writer on film; BRIAN McFARLANE is a principal lecturer in Literature and Cinema Studies at Chisholm Institute of Technology; ADRIAN MARTIN is a freelance writer on film; LYN MCDONALD is a freelance writer on film; LORRAINE MORTIMER lectures In Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.

^F^kwards and NominationsA M NOMINATIONS

BEST FILMDead Calm; Evil Angels; Ghosts... of the Civil Dead; and Island

BEST DIRECTIONPaul Cox (Island)', Ben Lewin (Georgia); Phil Noyce (Dead Calm); and Fred Schepisi (Evil Angels)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Paul Cox (Island); Gene Conkie,Evan English, John Hillcoat (Ghosts... of the Civil Dead); Gerard Lee, Jane Campion (Sweetie); and Ben Lewin, Joanna Murray-Smith, Bob Weis (Georgia).

BEST ACTRESSJudy Davis (Georgia); Genevieve Lemon (Sweetie); Irene Pappas (Island); and Meryl Streep (Evil Angels)

BEST ACTORMike Bishop (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead); John Hargreaves (Emerald City); Chris Haywood (Island); and Sam Neill (Evil Angels)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Dorothy Barry (Sweetie); Maryanne Fahey (Celia); Nicole Kidman (Emerald City); and Victoria Longley (Celia)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jon Darling (Sweetie); Kim Gyngell

(Heaven Tonight); Chris Haywood (Emerald City); and Bogdan Koca (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHYDean Semler (Dead Calm); Paul Murphy (Emerald City); Yuri Sokol (Georgia); and Sally Bongers (Sweetie)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAYRobert Caswell, Fred Schepisi (Evil Angels); David Williamson (Emerald City); Terry Hayes (Dead Calm); and Abe Pogos (Compo)

[AS ONLY FOUR FILMS WERE ENTERED IN

THIS CATEGORY, ALL FOUR HAVE BEEN

PUT FORWARD AS NOMINATIONS.]

BEST EDITINGJill Billcock (Evil Angels); John Scott (Island); Richard Francis-Bruce (Dead Calm); and Stewart Young (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead)

BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCOREGraeme Revell (Dead Calm); Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead); Paul Grobowsky (Georgia); and Bruce Smeaton (Evil Angels)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Graham (Grace) Walker (Dead Calm); Jon Dowding (Georgia); Neil Angwin (Island); and Chris Kennedy (Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead)

BEST COSTUME DESIGNAphrodite Kondos (Georgia); Karen Everett (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead); Rose Chong (Whatthe Moon SavV); and Gary L. Keady (Sons of Steel)

BEST SOUNDCraig Carter, Terry Rodman, Peter Fenton (Evil Angels); John Phillips, Roger Savage (Georgia); Ben Osmo, Lee Smith, Roger Savage (Dead Calm); and Bronwyn Murphy, Dean Gawen, Rex Watts, Peter Clancy (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead)

MEMBERS PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN A FEATURE FILMCelia; Compo, Dead Calm; Evil Angels, Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead; Emerald City, Georgia; Heaven Tonight; Island; Sweetie; Sons o f Steel; and What the Moon Saw

KODAK NON-FEATURE NOMINATIONS

BEST DOCUMENTARYA Little Life; Confessions of a Simple Surgeon; Joe Leahy's Neighbours; and Philippines, My Philippines

BEST SHORT FICTION FILMBonza; The Contract, Crack in the Curtains; and Lover Boy

BEST ANIMATED FILMLucky Girl; Ratropolis; The Shadow- lands; and Still Flying

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Shadow Panic; Soul Mate; The Tenth Man; and Valley o f Desire

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHYVladimir Osherov (77?e Beat);Nicholas Adler (Hunters); John Whitteron (Philippines, My Philip­pines); and Sally Bongers (Shadow Panic)

BEST DIRECTION

David Ogilvy (The Contract); David Knaus (Contradictions); Jinks Dulhunty (Crack in the Curtains); and Solrun Hoaas (Green Tea and Cherry Ripe)

BEST EDITINGMatthew Tucker (A Day and a Half); Denise Haslem, Tim Litchfield (Australia Daze); Rod Hibberd (Buried Alive: The Story of East Timor); and Line Hiatt (Soul Mate)

BEST SCREENPLAY

David Swann (Bonza); David Ogilvy (The Contract); Steven Faux (No Need to Stand); and Barry Dickins (Ruthven-A Poem of Life and Dettol)

BEST SOUNDTim Chau, Ralph Strasser (The Bear); Liam Egan, Counterpoint Sound (Body Work); Mark Ward, Robert Sullivan, Liam Egan (Crack in the Curtains); and Robin Anderson (Joe Leahy's Neighbours)

THE DENDY AWARDS FOR AUSTRALIAN SHORT FILMS

GENERAL CATEGORYAn Ordinary Woman (Sue Brooks)

FICTION CATEGORY

Lover Boy (Geoffrey Wright)

A U S T R A L I A N F I L M F I N A N C E C O R P O R A T I O N F U N D I N G D E C I S I O N SJULY: T E L E V IS IO N : JACKAROO Crawford Productions.AUGUST: FE A TU R E : ISABELLE EBERHARDT Seon Films International. Producers: Ian Pringle, Jean Petit. T E L E V ISIO N DRAMA: THE EILEEN JOYCE STORY Australian Children’s Television Foundation Productions. Producer: Antonia Barnard. MORE WINNERS Australian Children’s Television Foundation Productions.Producers: Antonia Barnard, Margot McDonald. THE SAINT IN SYDNEY Templar Productions. Producer: Sue Milliken. SOUTH PACIFIC ADVENTURES Grundy Motion Pictures. Roger Mirams.D O C U M E N T A R IE S : AUSTRALIA DANCES Cinetel Productions. Producer: Frank Heimans. THE GREAT TOA HOAX Kennedy White. Producer: Kate White. THIS LAND AUSTRALIA Sorena. Producer: John Maybey. UP FOR ADOPTION Langdon Films. Producer: Martyn Langdon Down. WOMEN OF THE IRON ORE FRONTIER Fraser Film and Video. Producer: Lilias Fraser.

YORAM GROSS ANIMATION AWARDStill Flying (Robert Stephenson)

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY

Contradictions (David Knaus)

16TH ROUBEN MAMOULIAN AWARD > •

Contradictions (David Knaus)

3 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

John Meillon, who sadly died in August, in one of his finest films, Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris.

38TH MELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM

AWARDS

THE GRAND PRIXCITY OF MELBOURNE AWARDFOR BEST FILMTwilight City (Reece Auguiste), produced by the Black Audio Film Collective, London. $4,000

THE ERWIN RADO AWARD FOR BEST AUSTRALIAN FILM (SPONSORED BY FILM VICTORIA)An Ordinary Woman (Sue Brooks).

$1,500

THE STATE FILM CENTRE AWARD FOR BEST CHILDREN'S FILMRARG (Tony Collingwood), National Film & TV School, London.Distribution contract.

THE KINO CINEMAS AWARD FOR BEST STUDENT FILMLife A t Ma's (Stewart Carter), Swinburne Film &TV School, Melbourne. $1,000

THE SCHWARTZ PUBLISHING AWARD FOR BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILMGentlemen (David Farringdon) United

Kingdom. $1,500

THE HANIMEX-FUJI AWARD FOR BEST ANIMATIONBreakfast On The Grass (Prit Parn),

Estonia, USSR. $1,500

THE HERALD AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARYBody Work (David Caesar), Australia. $1,500

THE FRONT PAGE MANAGEMENT AWARD FOR BEST FICTION FILM AWARDED JOINTLY TOThe Third Wheel (writer-director Adam Bernstein), New York, USA; andLover Soy (writer-director Geoffrey Wright), Melbourne. $1,500

CERTIFICATES OF MERIT WERE AWARDED TOKitchen Sink (Alison McLean), New Zealand (Fiction); One Step Beyond (Naoto Yamakawa), Japan (Fiction); Lalala Human Sex Duo No. 1 (Bernard Herbert), Canada (Experimental); Shadow Panic, (Margot Nash) Australia (Experimental); RARG (Tony Collingwood), U.K. (Animation); Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies, (Brothers Quay), U.K. (Animation);The World Is Watching (Pater Raymont), Canada (Documentary); A Little Life (Deborah Howlett), Australia (Documentary)

SIN OF OMMISSIONThe production company for the FFC- fimded feature Riders on the Storm, listed in the July issue of Cinema Papers, is Dark Horse Pictures.

S P O L E T OThe Spoleto Film and Video Festival will be held at the State Film Centre,Melbourne, from September 15 to 21. The program opens with Michael Lehmann’s controversial teen film,Heathers.Other films include Terence Davis’s trilogy of Children, Madonna and Child and Transfiguration . Davis did the acclaimed Distant Voices, Still Lives.A section of the festival is devoted to Pacific Issues, and presents recent works from Hawaii, Nuigini, New Zealand and Austra­lia. Other sections include: Gay Film and Fringe Films from India.In in the seminar series, topics cover: Male Order (homo-erotica and male images), Out of the Ordinary (women, feminism and narrative), Lore and Order (indigenous approaches to media), and Recorder (film journalism and the analytical approach).

“How have women been represented among the six-guns, the saloons and the sagebrush?” enquires the sub-head on p.43 of Cinema Papers for March 1989. The last place you’ll find out is in “Women Gone West”, the article which follows. To support her assertion that “writing about women in western films is a little like writing about women in Moby Dick”, Rose Lucas cites seven films. Seven, in a field of cinema which overflows with powerful roles for women. Early serials stars like Ruth Roland and Helen Gibson appeared in scores of western chapter plays. Why no mention of them, nor of

Lillian Gish inThe Wind, Sjostrom’s grim picture of a woman destroyed by the monotony and labour of frontier life? (A film, incidentally, scripted by a woman, Frances Marion.)How is any discussion of women in westerns possible without a mention of Dietrich in Rancho Notorious and Destry Rides Again? Or Johnny Guitar, with its final gunfight between Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge? What happened to Gene Tierney as the 1941 Belle Starr, Elizabeth Montgomery in the remake, or Ruth Roman as Belle Starr’s daughter? Doris Day as Calamity Jane and Jane Alexander in the 1984 revisionist version (written by Suzanne Clauser, by the way). Why no mention of The Harvey Girls, with Judy Garland as a frontier waitress and its classic all-woman bar-room brawl? Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where sexual parity is meticulously observed. How about show-business western heroines? Monroe in A Ticket To Tomahawk (and River O f No Return, if it comes to that), Annie Oakley played by Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun and Geraldine Chaplin in Buffalo Bill A nd The Indians. Sophia Loren in Heller in Pink Tights? What about Faye Dunaway as an oilwoman in Oklahoma Crude, Fonda as a Forties rancher in Comes A Horseman, Raquel Welch in Hannie Caulderi Then there’s the whole Howard Hawks canon, filled with powerful women who trade wisecracks and punches with the men, and mostly leave them standing: Joanne Dru in Red River, Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo, Michelle Carey and others in El Dorado - script by (Ms) Leigh Brackett.Maybe it’s hard to find women in Moby Dick, but to miss the whale takes real dedication. Maybe Ms Lucas wasn’t looking?

Sincerely, JOHN BAXTER

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 3

4 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

LEFT: MARGOT NASH'S

SHADOW PICNIC, PHOTOGRAPHED

BY SALLY BONGERS

A L L Yc i n e m a t o g r a p h e r

G E R Sp a r t i c u l a i r e

R e p o r t

by

ARELY HAS AN AUSTRALIAN FILM CREATED SUCH A

SENSE OF ANTICIPATION AS SWEETIE, PHOTOGRAPHED BY SALLY BONGERS AND

DIRECTED BY JANE CAMPION. THIS EXPECTATION WAS FURTHER HEIGHTENED

M a r y

C o l b e r t

Creating an impact is notnew to Bongers and Campion. Peel, a superbly crafted film made at the Australian Film, Televi­sion and Radio School (AFTRS), won the Palm d’Or for shorts at the 1986 Cannes Festival. And their bold and quirky A GirVs

Own Story was shown the same year in Un Certain Regard (with Pas­sionless Moments and Two Friends). Bongers had already won for A GirVs an Australian Film Award for Best Cinematography in the non­features section. This had signalled her first inroad into that male- dominated domain.

Bongers has been nominated again in 1989, this time for Sweetie, which is the first 35 mm Australian feature to have been shot by a woman. Bongers is proud o f the nomination because “it sets a prece­dent”. In an area where females experience great difficulties getting a job, a nomination is a bonus. She is very touched to be up there with the best in the field, but also level-headed. “I ’m not the first woman to deserve it. I f more women had been given the opportunity, the list would be much longer. But it does register a confirmation that you are really working in the area.”

Bongers’s confidence and determination have paid off. Inter­viewed about future prospects after graduating from the AFTRS four years ago , Bongers was optimistic: “I ’m not worried. I f you stick to what you’re doing, you’ll get there. I don’t expect to be employed because I am a woman, but because o f the quality o f my work. It’s only a matter o f time.” She staunchly refused to compromise by working as a camera assistant in the lean times, because “it would have set me back at least five years.”

WHEN THE FILM WAS SELECTED IN COMPETITION AT

THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL THIS YEAR, AND

CREATED A CONTROVERSY BY DAZZLING THE

CRITICS AND POLARIZING THE AUDIENCE.

Today, Bongers is being acknowledged on her own terms - as one o f a new breed o f filmmakers determined to change the fabric and horizon of cinema in this country. Along with Jane Campion and John Hill coat (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead), her work bears the stamp ofbold statement. And at barely 30, that is quite an achievement.

Bongers and Campion share a common, and complementary, per­ception o f film strongly influenced by art backgrounds. “Jane and I share the ideal o f making the visual side o f film as important as other aspects. We have a commitment to push ourselves in new directions.” They are not interested in the big epic, but the little moments which shape lives; the interior which must be expressed through small gestures; the ordinary that becomes the extraordinary. Thus far, the little moments have provided the fabric for their films; stylistically the designs have been bold, confronting.

“I have to be bold about what I do. I don’t mean that the visual has to take over, but that it should enhance the meaning and make it stronger. Film language can express so much and I feel really driven to add that dimension.

“I don’t believe Australian films have visually challenged audiences much in the past; the cinematography is so restrained. The camera is used in a literal way, following actors from point to point (I call it ‘dot- to-dot filmmaking’), tracking (which I love) and panning indiscrimi-

N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

“I don’t believe A ustralian

film s have visually challenged

nately. There seems to be little ques­tioning of the reason for a particular shot: ‘What’s the best way to en­hance the script at this point? Is this being expressed as fully as possible in visual terms?’”

Bongers strongly believes the power of images and the visual aware­ness of the public are underestimated by most filmmakers. “Exposure to ads and video music clips has sharp­ened audience’s visual responses. They are acutely conscious of visual clues - if not intellectually, then by instinct, and a gut reaction can be very powerful.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making films for a specific audience. I f we had taken the script of Sweetie and shot it conservatively, its original meaning would have been lost. You either make the film you conceived, or you don’t. When you start compromising, you lose the essence, but if you make the film honestly, you come up with the most powerful material.”

Bongers and Campion were trying to break new ground by

ILLUSTRATIONS, CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: FEAR OF LIFE (1984),

WHICH BONGERS DIRECTED, SHOT AND EDITED. A GIRL'S OWN

STORY (1983), THE SECOND FILM SHOT BY BONGERS FOR

DIRECTOR JANE CAMPION, AND TWO FRAME ENLARGEMENTS

FROM CAMPION'S SWEETIE (1989).

audiences much in the past; the cine­

matography is so restrained. The camera

is used in a literal way; following

actors from point to point, tracking

and p a n n in g indiscriminately. There

seems to be little questioning of the

reason fo r a particu lar shot. ”

moving away from the traditional feature structure. They cut up the predictable shape into small sections o f little moments. The focus in the early part is on Kay (Karen Colston), a sombre and introspective bank clerk who enters a new relationship with Louis (Tom Lycos). But this relationship recedes into the background with the visit o f her sister, Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon), and the film becomes absorbed with the domestic family fabric.

6 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

divideaI like using darkness to create

a different shape to the fram e, cutting

it or making a slit down one side to

create an irregularity . . .

So much commercial product is overlit.

What are they all afraid of?”

“We didn’t want our audience to be lulled into a feeling o f security. It’s important to place them in different states o f mind, to be alert and questioning.” Bongers is speaking o f Sweetie, but also reflecting her general attitude to filmmaking. Liberation o f space and camera appears to be the motto: “You have 360 degrees and you can put the camera anywhere. It ’s not that I want to be different for the sake of it, I just don’t feel the need to be constrained by what’s been done in the past.”

A favourite means o f changing perspective is shooting high angles downwards. Bongers gives as an example from Sweetie where Kay is lying in bed after having observed Sweetie’s washing their father in the bath. The camera and audience look down on Kay’s face to register her shock and confusion. Had she seen a suggestion of incest or just Sweetie’s naturally exuberant tenderness? “It is by far the most effective angle to convey that ambiguity”, explains Bongers.

Art has played a significant role in moulding her approach and was an integral part o f family life, her mother working as a potter. The only subjects Bongers enjoyed at school were art and its components, including still photography and the Super 8 club. “Without those I would never have survived school; they were its only redeeming features. The inspiration to become an artist was my central impulse: it is directly related to my filmmaking. I saw film as a way of incorporating art with earning a living.

“I have always had a way of looking at things that was different. In photography class at school, I always wanted to go to the extreme - print on grade 5 paper, push film through five stops. I wasn’t consciously rebelling, but when I looked at other people’s work it seemed so much tamer. I tended to work from instinct a lot.”

Not surprisingly, Bongers was inspired by such ‘art’ filmmakers as Godard, Tarkovsky and Antonioni, who rebelled against traditional linear formats and sought a deeper level o f expres­sion o f the inner self through images. She was impressed by their unconventional way o f looking at the world; their reversal o f relationship between people and subjects; the depersonalized perspec­tive; the radical use of space and time. The early films of Antonioni, especially, influenced Bongers’s ideas on framing. From then on, it was a case of exploring her own.

Bongers maintains that the key to cinematogra­phy is framing. “There are so many ways you can position or frame a shot to make a difference to meaning. But too many people lose inspiration when faced with the technology of the process.

“I love setting frames and working out where things should be. When I ’m composing a frame, I like to start out with it empty and place things in it gradually, building up the layers till eventually it conveys everything the script requires. But it’s im­portant for me to start with that clean slate.”

As much as possible, Bongers likes to create the

illusion o f depth by lighting deep into the frame and by choreograph­ing the actors to and from the camera. She also loves a dark look and heaps of contrast. “I like using darkness to create a different shape to the frame, cutting it or making a slit down one side to create an irregu­larity, avoiding the traditional or classic rectangular frame. I don’t want to be afraid to bring in a lot o f darkness. So much commercial product is overlit. What are they all afraid of?”

Bongers admits she used to be terrified of lighting in the early days, but on A Girl’s Own Story (made in third year at the AFTRS) she realized that if she seriously wanted to work in cinematography she would have to come to grips with it. Now Bongers finds “painting with light” one of the most tantalizing aspects of her craft. In fact, one avenue of employment between projects is doing the lighting on music clips.

With Sweetie, Bongers’s work has entered a new phase and right now she feels passionate about pushing her cinematography further, especially on features. She loves the stimulation of the collaboration process, with people acting as catalysts for each other, refining and improving ideas. She believes most filmmaking teams could collabo­rate more strongly. “One of the reasons I love working with J ane is that she responds so well to that process. I believe you make a stronger film that way.” It was the same on Margot Nash’s Shadow Picnic, for which Bongers has been nominated for Best Cinematography in the non­features section.

“I need to be passionate about what I ’m doing. It’s easier to give a lot to a film if you can relate strongly to the script. I have a lot to offer and I don’t want to just sit back.”

Bongers would love to collaborate again with Campion, but realizes they both need to expand through separate experiences (Campion is currently in New Zealand directing a mini-series about

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 7

a b o v e : th e p y e f a m il y f r o m Janet Frame). “I believe you create your p eel , th e fir st c a m p io n / b o n - own opportunities; imagination is the only

g e r s c o l l a b o r a t io n , a n d limit. I ’d love to have the opportunity to b e l o w : s a l l y b o n g e r s a t w o r k work m America with directors like David

Lynch ( Blue Velvet is one or the most significant films I ’ve seen; it has an amazing subtext and unexpected ways o f showing the dark side of character”), David Byrne, Peter Weir and Errol Morris, who did The Thin Blue Line (“I love the way he used documentary material in a feature film way”). She would also like to work in Australia with John Hillcoat (“Ghosts is such a powerful statement”). Concerned that all sounds too grand, Bongers adds, “I have a lot o f energy and ideas. I feel I have a lot to contribute.”

Meanwhile, Bongers is going to the New York Film Festival, where Sweetie is being shown, and is hoping to complete shooting a 60 minute experimental documentary, Evidence. Funded by the Austra­lian Film Commission’s Creative Development Branch, it uses docu­mentary in non-traditional ways, something she has been interested in since beginning film school. “I get inspired by the possibility of discarding traditional linear forms and structures, and using documen­tary characters like fiction ones, stylizing and controlling the film in a way similar to drama or a poem.” This is a technique Bongers has already used in the documentary, Fear o f Life, which she directed, shot and edited.

Prospects look quite bright now, but that hasn’t always been the case. She hated school and rebelled against the repression of the system. “It wasn’t an active rebellion because I was so depressed about being there that I had very little energy. A lot o f the time I would just lie on the lawn and not talk to people - though that sort o f became in­vogue. I had to fight the whole way to retain my identity, and I know I was a lot more stubborn than most. Because I refused to compromise, I emerged relatively intact.”

Bongers believes the repressive influence of the education system stifles natural creativity and individuality. “We are all entitled to it and have it when we’re born, but it’s beaten out of us along the way. I find individuality sadly lacking today.”

A supportive home environment was crucial to surviving the school years and has played a significant part in her career. “My parents exposed us to the arts, and encouraged independence and self suffi­ciency. They gave us the confidence to take on whatever path we chose. I feel privileged to have that home environment.”

Bongers was encouraged to do camera work by a lecturer at the West Australia Institute of Technology, where she studied Art and Design. But at the AFTRS Bongers once more came into contact with institution which she believes attempts to control and mould its students. She admits it provided wonderful opportunities - “fantastic equipment”, etc. - but there was very little encouragement o f experi­

mentation. People working in traditional areas, such as commercial films, linear documentaries and predictable formats, were much more valued. “It was disappointing our work was not more appreciated.”

Significantly, it was at the AFTVRS that Bongers met a number o f people with whom she found an affinity o f aesthetics and filmmaking ideals. With some she would form important links, such as Campion. “As soon as Jane showed me the script for Peel, I was wrapped in i t . It was so succinct, so direct and simple.” They found they shared many ideals - particularly to make films of their own; original, modern films that were relevant to their generation.

When she elected to become a cinematographer, Bongers knew she was opting for a difficult course. But she wasn’t daunted by the male domination, the boys networking or the other obstacles and myths. She believed in her own ability.

Bongers has worked fairly consistently, but many o f the opportunities have been provided by networking with other women. “Women open doors to other women. Margaret Fink offered Gill Armstrong her chance to direct a feature; Jane Campion gave me mine to shoot one; and I employed Jane Castle as camera operator. But I didn’t compromise standards to give

Jane the job because she is female; I believed she was the best person for it. It’s a matter o f trust.

“Perhaps men find it difficult to trust us in an area o f technical responsibility. A lot of the time it’s not conscious discrimination but o f wanting to work with those you know and trust.”

As director o f photography on a feature, Bongers had a first-hand opportunity to disprove some of the myths that prevailed about women working in technical areas. “According to one myth, women are not physically strong enough to carry and handle the heavy equipment required in filmmaking. But there is no substance to it. There are so many people working on a feature [her own team had eight] that no one person has to carry it all. As DOP, I carried less stuff than ever before. Basically all I had to do was work with my light metre and my mind. Yet the myth prevails.

“Women have so much to offer camera or any area. There is no proof for it, but I believe there is an intuitive feminine aesthetic which can enrich everyone’s work. Till there is an equal share of work, and as long as talented women are deprived of the opportunities, it is everyone’s loss. Men can also gain from sharing the power.”

Generally Bongers is optimistic about the future. “I do feel there is a new era o f Australian filmmaking around the corner, with younger people like Jane and John Hillcoat coming through. They’ve been around for a while but now they are getting the opportunities to make features. This will influence the way films are made here and open another level which will affect all areas o f film and TV. When films such as Sweetie and Ghostscome out, they shake up the film environment and push ideas further. That is why they should receive support. They bring a much-needed freshness and boldness to the filmmaking climate.”

NOTE1. Jan Kenny shot Fran on 16 mm before it was blown up to 35 mm.

8 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

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C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 9

4 » RIGHT: AMERICAN 'POP' ZEST: JOHN HUGHES'S

FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. CAMERON (ALAN RUCK), FERRIS

(MATTHEW BRODERICK) AND SLOANE (MIA SARA).

7

M 'O i / 'i e

W H Y B O T H E R

?THE TIME HAS COME,

IN THE NAME OF THE TEEN MOVIE,

TO OVERCOME A FEW

RESISTANCES AND TO SETTLE

A FEW SCORES...

b u

H ERE WAS A M OM EN T, earlier this year, when both Time magazine and TV’s Entertainm ent This Week leapt

breathlessly to the conclusion that - sigh of relief - the decade of the ‘teen movie’ was over. (O f course, teen movies have been around for ages, but the late 1970s began a boom period when the film market was per­ceived to bepredominandy teenage.) Adults were, according to the demographics, start­ing to go to the theatres again; and main­stream cinema was, accordingly, attempting to ‘grow up’ once more, to reflect ‘mature’ preoccupations. Scarcely two weeks later, however, a Time reviewer was singing the praises of Heathers, and dutifully noting the existence o f Richard Baskin’s musical Sing! -th e two latest films about teenagers in high school; while Leonard Maltin on ETWwas coping, business as usual, with the latest re­leases featuring Corey Haim, River Phoe­nix, Winona Ryder and Patrick Dempsey. The Death o f the Teen Movie was, shall we say, rather short-lived - a strange and quickly strangled critical catchcry prompted, no doubt, by a high degree of wishful thinking

on the part of these rather wearily ‘adult’ pundits o f contemporary cin­ema, with their often extremely middle-ground ‘liberal’ tastes.

O f course, for fans o f the ‘genre’ (a troublesome word, but we’ll stick with it for the time being), the teen movie never died, and is scarcely about to roll over. Sure, the much-hyped ‘brat pack’ of the early- to mid-1980s - the generation o f Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy and Ally Sheedy - has moved on, albeit in some cases rather uneasily, to adult parts; but another generation has quickly and unfussily, according to the relentless and implacable logic of the market, taken its place (check out any issue o f Teen Dreams at your newsagent for quick confirmation of this fact). In fact, there are always new ‘mainstream’ teen movies arriving at the theatres — many of which go completely unreviewed and unnoted by ‘professional’ newspaper film reviewers - including, recently, Shag, Fresh Horses, Mystic Pizza, Loverboy and Some Girls.; not to mention all the usual hybrids of the teen formula with other available genres such as horror, sci fi and action, a territory too vast to cover in this article.

But there’s a lot more to consider than just mainstream releases. We must comprehend the formidable teen movie presence in virtually every other branch of that increasingly complex and diffuse culture industry we call ‘the cinema’. First, how can one ignore, for instance, all the funky ‘arty’ teen movies from Europe and Asia, many of them completely way out, which make it to our more enlightened film festivals or art-house cinemas - Japanese wonders like The New Morning o f Billy the K id , So What? and The Typhoon Club", or Euro­rockers like Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties, or even Rohmer’s Boyfriends and Girlfriends> Such films connect directly, and unasham­edly, to the American ‘pop’ zest o f any John Hughes or Rob Reiner teen film you care to name. Even the grittier teen ‘issue’ films, more closely resembling the classic festival/art house bill o f fare (like 36 Fillette or Jean-Claude Brisseau’s The Sound and the Fury) tend to have a querulous strangeness or a libidinal intensity to them which is endlessly disconcerting to mild-mannered, full-time film reviewers.

Second, how could an observer o f local independent film ignore the conspicuous fact that a strikingly predominant number o f films are

10 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

teen-oriented? At the recent St Kilda Film Festival, for instance, they ranged all the way from naturalism of The Invisible Girl and Passiona to the hi-jinx o f Crack in the Curtains and Smoke cEm ifT o u ’ve Got cEm, via the minimalism of A fter Hours? Third, there are the would- be ‘cult’ teen films, those glamorous film s maudits, which are re­claimed by repertory cinemas shortly after their sadly non-eventful cinema release:Penelope Spheeris’ Dudes, William Richert’s A Night In theLife o f Jim m y Reardon, Sidney Lumet’s Running On Empty.

Fourth - and most abundant of all - there are all those unknown teen wonders which slum into the video store unheralded, undis­covered, unwritten about virtually anywhere: just lately, that list includes Sweet Lorraine,Plain Clothes, Permanent Record, The In Crowd, Aloha Summer, M ade in USA, SchoolDaze, Promised L an d, Blueberry H ill, D oin’ Time on Planet Earth, H eartbreak Hotel and Three O’clock High. Not all these films are mas­terpieces by any means, but all o f them are interesting and exciting in myriad ways - and collectively, they suggest that, if young teens are indeed deserting the theatres, they’re probably still getting their youth culture fix on their VCRs. I ’d definitely propose that any serious film lover who has not completely rigor-mortified into ‘adulthood’ should be pursuing that fix as well, along all possible lines of film culture.

C I N E M A P

OK. The time has come, in the name of the teen movie, to overcome a few resistances, and settle a few scores. It’s not just a problem of the newspaper reviewers, on their most visible and influential stratum of the film culture sphere, ignoring the interests and achievements of the teen movie; the problem spreads right

through the middle stratum (serious, con­scientious magazines with a relatively broad appeal like American Film, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Filmnews and Cinema P a­pers-, TV programs like SBS’ The Movie Show), all the way to the specialist and aca­demic spheres (magazines like Framework, Movie, Cam era Obscura and Continuum ; critical film programs on public radio). In every site, we will find that the teen movie is regularly either: a. completely ignored (neither Sight & Sound nor Cahiersdu C in­

ema has devoted a single feature article to the phenomenon of the modern teen movie); or b. rhetorically dumped on as the odious ‘norm’ of contemporary commercial cinema, even 1980s mass culture generally. This position is tacitly reiterated (and never argued) every time a reviewer redeems such-and-such a film (say, Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge) as ‘not your average teen movie’, or laments that such- and-such a director (say, Joan Micklin Silver) has plummeted to making - horror of horrors - a ‘teen flick’ (Keith Connolly’s favourite

A P E R S 7 5 11

IT'S NOT JUST A PROBLEM OF THE

NEWSPAPER REVIEWERS IGNORING THE

INTERESTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE

TEEN MOVIE; THE PROBLEM SPREADS

RIGHT THROUGH THE MIDDLE STRATUM ... ALL THE WAY TO THE SPECIALIST AND

ACADEMIC SPHERES.

+

T H e I N M c v L e

ABOVE: FUNKY,

'ARTY' TEEN MOVIE: ERIC

ROHMER'S BOYFRIENDS AND GIRL­

FRIENDS. BLANCHE

(EMMANUELLE CHAULET) AND FABIAN

(ERIC VIELLARD). CLOCKWISE FROM

RIGHT: 'RESPECTABLE' TEEN MOVIES:

ROBERT MULLIGAN'S SUMMER OF 42

(WITH GARY GRIMES AND JENNIFER

O'NEILL), LASSE HALLSTROEM'S MY LIFE

AS A DOG (TOMAS VON BROEMSSEN,

ANTON GLANZELIUS), SCOTT MURRAY'S

DEVIL IN THE FLESH (KATIA CABALLERO,

KEITH SMITH), AND BILL FORSYTH'S

GREGORY'S GIRL (GORDON JOHN

SINCLAIR, DEE HEPBURN).

FACING PAGE TOP: KIM CATTRALL,

BOYD GAINES AND NANCY PARSONS IN

BOB CLARK'S PORKY'S: ONE OF THE

AMORPHOUS 'MASS' OF OBJECTS

BRANDED AS TEEN MOVIES.

AND BELOW: RICKY (DANIEL SCHNEIDER)

AND MONIQUE (DIANE FRANKLIN)

IN THE UNLOVED BETTER OFF DEAD.

term of abuse in the film columns o f Melbourne’s The Herald). More elaborately, this position is established when, every few years, a major magazine like Film Comment, Cineaste or even Positif devotes a few smart-arse feature pages to off-handedly dismissing the genre as bad art, and castigating it for its numerous ideological sins (sexism, racism, consumerism, etc).1

I should clarify two points at this early stage o f my polemic. First, I am fully aware that the term ‘teen movie’ stretches a long way - far enough to include a certain kind o f teen film which has no problem whatsoever garnering praise from reviewers and audiences o f polite middle-ground tastes. I f we take ‘teen movie’ to signify any film which deals with the drama or comedy of growing up in a specific social en­vironment, then there are o f course a flood of completely ‘respectable’ teen films which come to mind: Summer o f 42, My Life as a Dog, Breaking Away, Gregory’s Girl, A Summer Story, Devil in the Flesh... or indeed, just about any Australian teen film (save Toung Einstein or Windrider) you care to name. Mull is a paradigm case: like the others mentioned, it is in a realistic or naturalistic mode, with a strongly specific ‘sense of place’; it registers as a distinctive, ‘personal’ film; it has individualized, psychological characters; it is reflective and serious.

Making necessary distinc­tions, we could say that Mull’s ‘world view’, its tone (like that of 36 Fillette), is tough and contemporary, whereas those films in the Summer o f 42 vein are more ‘autumnal’, wispy, whimsi­cal, nostalgic; but still, I think, my strategic group­ing holds. Tough and ten­der, here, are two sides of the same naturalistic coin.

The acid test is this: how many people would instantly and unselfconsciously call Mull or My Life as a Dog ‘teen movies’ - let alone ‘teen flicks’? From experience, I

know that most people immediately move to separate and distinguish such ‘precious’ films from that hideous, amorphous ‘mass’ of objects branded teen movies. (Own up, all those readers who choked when I cited that oh-so sensitive film Funning On Empty above as a teen movie!) Well, that’s the mass I ’m talking about: everything from A nim al House and Porky’s to License to Drive and One Crazy Summer, all those sadly unloved films like Secret Admirer, Joy o f Sex, Just One of the Guys, Willy Milly, Sixteen Candles, The Woo Woo K id , Nice Girls Don’t Explode, T u ff Turf, Better O ff Dead, The Legend o f Billie Jean and several hundred others, all at that video store near you. These are films which are, if not quite ‘disrespectable’ to all classes of viewers, at least conventional and formulaic, standard popular culture entertain­ment fare: full of familiar plot and situation cliches, unashamed character stereotypes, patently unreal fantasy worlds; and essentially accommodating of the dominant, patriarchal, capitalist ideology.

But I don’t really want to divide and conquer here. River’s Edge is certainly a tough, complex, naturalistic, disturbing film which can - and should - be discussed extensively as a teen movie (Hunter certainly knows two or three things about the form); and Dudes is a flipped-out, intense, thoroughly artificial film bursting with the contradictions of its two dozen borrowed genres, which can also be equally extensively discussed as a teen movie. I ’m not resistant to including Mull in my critical system of the teen movie, I ’m just heartily sick of all those who can’t, or won’t, include Joy o f Sex in theirs.

Secondly, I am not claiming that no one has ever written enthusi-

12 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

FOR ALL [THE] DILIGENT RETRIEVAL OF ESPECIALLY GOOD AND INTERESTING

TEEN MOVIES ... SOMETHING STILL REMAINS SAFELY CORDONED OFF, AND IT IS PRECISELY

THAT DESPISED 'MASS' OF ANONYMOUS TEEN MOVIES ... EVEN TEEN MOVIE FANS TEND

TO PROCEED VIA A PUT-DOWN OF 'THE TEEN MOVIE' AS SUCH ... IN ORDER TO THEN ES­TABLISH WHAT RISES WELL ABOVE THAT 'NORM'.

astically or sensitively about teen movies. You may have to look hard to find the good press - up the back of some of those ‘middle stratum’ magazines, where the more passionate reviews and commentaries lurk, saying what they can in a very small space (ala Cinema. Papers o f 1985- 6) - but it does exist. Generally, though, I can’t help thinking that even the available defences o f the teen movie (or particular teen movies) fail to go far enough, and deeply enough, into their subject. And this takes us right to the heart o f why the teen movie is such a ‘problem’ for film writing at all levels.

From my observations, teen movie defenders tend to be critics whose critical consciousness was decisively formed either before or after the great explosion o f 1970s film theory - writers who (in sometimes subtle ways) are strongly ‘Sixties’ or ‘Eighties’ in their style of thought and their methodology, plus a few Seventies defectors who scrabbled for the open air once the theory machine got a little too shrunken and claustrophobic, opting for the more modest and ex­ploratory space of reviewing films for, say, Monthly Film Bulletin. Magazines that are still in some senses strongly, doggedly tied to Seventies methodology and style (like Screen and Framework) have never paid the slightest attention to the teen phenomenon, and perhaps never will.

However, the critical methodologies o f the Sixties and Eighties are not necessarily much better when it comes to truly confronting the mass of teen movies. Is it enough, for instance, to want to seek out (Sixties ‘film buff style) the unsung ‘masterpieces’ of the genre, the undiscovered auteurs, or the films that display a knowing reverence for traditional Hollywood forms? Granted, it would be no small achieve­ment to one day find FerrisBueller’sDay Off, Fast Times a t Ridgemont High, Reckless or Light o f Day promoted to a canonical position on one of those periodical ‘greatest films of all time’ polls - remember, this is a world in which even a supposedly intelligent magazine like Cineaste regards Reckless as “too absurd to discuss”. And, to be sure, the teen movie has numerous auteurs, doing smart and evolving work within the form, who receive far too little serious attention: Spheeris, Martha Coolidge, Hunter, Marisa Silver...come to think of it, even stalwart John Hughes has scarcely received his proper due in print. As for those especially knowing, taut, inventive teen movies treasured by buffs, those that can conjure a fond memory of the old Forties romantic comedies or the Fifties teen rebel melodramas ... I wouldn’t dispute that Valley Girl and The Sure Thing (romance), or A t Close Range and Over the Edge (rebellion) are worthy of some special attention some­where down the line.

But is this enough? Turning to the more intellectual buffs of CineAction! or Movie magazines - those who have absorbed some­thing o f the Seventies theory revolution into their now politicized methodology of ‘practical criticism’ - we find a slightly more sophis­ticated take in relation to the teen movie. Still more or less on the track of especially ‘significant’ films and ‘intelligent’ directors, critics like Robin Wood (as in his book Hollywood from Vietnam to R eagan ) propose new criteria o f value: the teen movies truly to be treasured are now those that somehow ‘subvert’, or at least give a strong critical insight into, the dominant ideology. Thus, Risky Business produces a critique o f the capitalist success story; The Wanderers reflects the experience of ordinary Americans slowly becoming politicized on the eve of the Vietnam era; and Fast Times a t Ridgemont High (in Wood’s account) “construct[s] a position for the female spectator that is neither masochistic nor merely compliant”.2

I ’m still dissatisfied. For all this diligent retrieval o f especially good and interesting teen movies - by buffs political and apolitical - something still remains safely cordoned off, and it is precisely that despised ‘mass’ of anonymous teen movies. There are still plenty of films that no one, it seems, wants to talk about. Think on it - discovering masterpieces or auteurs, isolating ‘subversive’ or avant garde exemplars: aren’t such critical gestures just, at some level, fancy

ways of separating, once again, the supposedly ‘good’ from the sup­posedly ‘bad’, the ‘precious’ from the ‘normal’, and ‘us’ (intelligent critics) from ‘them’ (the mass audience)? Even teen movie fans tend to proceed via a put-down o f ‘the teen movie’ as such - the common denominator teen movie, as it were - in order to then establish what rises well above that ‘norm’. It is rare - in fact startling - when Denis Wood, almost alone amongst writers on the teen movie, praises a film (in his case Corvette Summer) precisely because it is ‘normal’, average, unspecial; because it is, as he puts it, “as sand on the beach”.3

It is a little disappointing, really, that film criticism - even practical, buffy, movie-loving criticism - has got us so little of the way in understanding the entirety of cinema. What especially loses out, of course, is what is known as ‘popular’ cinema - all that sand on the beach. This is a surprising fate when you consider the strong ‘populist’ impulse that was doubtless at the origin of so many genre-based and auteurist projects of the Fifties and Sixties (from Cahiers to Mono­gram ) - the impulse to encounter and understand, in a rush, all the energy and savvy of the popular arts like Hollywood cinema and pop music, forms that were all-pervasive but conspicuously lacking from the official histories and theories of art and aesthetics. This originary

impulse is clearly testified to by Peter Wollen when, in recently looking back on his 1968 book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema that stood exactly on the cusp of old and new methodologies of film criticism, he remarks that the Six­ties uncovered a way of “mapping the Hollywood cinema in-depth”, an engagement with ‘popular my­thology’ that was “a gesture against.. .elitism ” .4

But the record suggests that Wollen, then as now (like so many

others), is fooling himself. Most writers of his period (such as Ray­mond Bellour or Laura Mulvey) quickly migrated from the messy depths of cinema to the more familiar and manageable surfaces. Valuable general theoretical points about cinema and culture were made during the Seventies, but only, primarily, through the study of the preferred auteurs (like Hitchcock), the ‘transgressive’ films (like Toung Mr Lincoln) and the especially glamorous genres (like film noir). Cahiers critic Serge Daney, in the late Seventies, was rather candid about this drift: “We wanted to re-read Ford, not Huston, to dissect Bresson and not Rene Clair, to psychoanalyse Bazin and not Pauline Kael”5. This indicates that critics were unconsciously setting

c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 13

T & e I N H c i / ' i e

rather strict limits - limits deriving, fundamentally, from their ‘taste’ - on what they were willing to find ‘interesting’-enough to spend time analysing.

The same process happens today, and the teen movie is one o f its prime victims. Taste, which seeks out the precious, quickly flees the norm. This is why, in many ways, the study of popular cinema (or at least the type of study which starts out from the films themselves) has advanced so little since the Sixties; why, for instance, most academic studies o f the horror genre never get past the same shallow pool of ‘great’ filmmakers and ‘special’ tides. Even an exceptional writer like Andrew Britton (from the Cine Action!-Movie camp) abandons any potential for a complex and sophisticated ‘populist’, in-depth under­standing of commercial cinema when he leaps, every time, for the superior critical ‘value’ o f a Hitchcock, Sirk or Minnelli over the run- of-the mill, convention-bound, ideologically determined Hollywood product.

However, there’s one last option. One might think that all this tasteful ‘selectivity’ on the part o f critics has been remedied by the sudden rise to prominence in the Eighties of a certain ‘encyclopaedic’ kind of writing devoted purely to the ‘popular’ genres - fanzines like, locally, F atal Visions, or books like Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies (reviewed in Cinem a Papers 74), which do not hesitate to cover the whole ground of their chosen topics. But, while the informative value of such work is beyond dispute, one has only to peruse the brutally ‘normative’ judgements of Newman’s book - the all-too-certain identification of all that is apparently self- evidently ‘bad’ in cinema, such as directors who can’t direct, scripts that have no back­bone, ideas that just don’t work or films that can’t get themselves together - to know that, for a new generation of B-movie buffs, the definition o f ‘criticism’ has sadly shrunken to little more than what it has always been for the worst o f the newspaper hacks: an exercise in superiority, the power to bless what is com­fortably good and damn what is uncomforta­bly bad.

What is thereby lost in such criticism is any notion of the cinema - even and especially popular cinema - as a place where risks can be taken, where experiments (sometimes inad­vertently) happen, and where thrillingly un­certain encounters between viewers and films should (and do) occur. Again, this is disap­pointing and surprising in the light of the thought that B-cinema, so often beyond the pale, excessive and surprising, surely demands and inspires a critical ap­proach that can break free from the protocols imposed by the ideal of a ‘norm’.6

Besides, the new wave fanzines are scarcely likely to sustain much contact with the dreaded teen movie. That is because, just as at the academic level, only certain genres are considered suitable material -i.e., acceptable to taste. In the fanzines (see Michael Helms’ report in Cinem aPapers 73), it’s only the ‘dirty’ genres which ever really matter. Thus, while it’s par for the course for these streetwise publications to extol the severe, perverse delights o f M aniac Cop, The Hidden or Street Trash (and I salute them for it), I can’t imagine that modest, rather wholesome little teen films like Seven Minutes in Heaven , Crazy For Tou or Pretty In Pink are ever quite going to get the same nod of subcultural approval. The teen genre is too ‘clean’ by half- a standard objection echoed on all the critical strata, for instance Positif s Philippe Royeur scoffing that “these youths, clean and antiseptic, miraculously untouched by the great crises o f contemporary America, are com­pletely ignorant o f Watergate and Vietnam”. (This predictable crack

at the massive ‘unrealism” o f the teen movie usually hums along with ‘these kids never do any schoolwork’, ‘there are no gays in teen movies’ and ‘all the adults are caricatures’.)

In a nutshell, you could say the form has virtually nothing going for it that would earmark it as worthy o f the attention o f your average critic. As a type of cinema and a slice o f culture, it is largely conservative and conventional, often bears wilfully little direct relation to the real world, and is essentially content to simply amuse its audiences. It is not particularly postmodern (only insofar as everything these days logically must be); in fact, it is unquestionably the daggiest, the nerdiest, the most whimsical o f genres. It runs on a reduced ‘utopian’ impulse in comparison with the most florid, and most critically prized, main­stream musicals or melodramas.

So why bother? Here are the reasons why I would choose to study the teen movie, from Am erican G raffiti to Say Anything-.

1. It exists; it’s popular. So-called ‘youth culture’, within which the teen movie sits, is a big, important deal. This culture is not just (as it is too often delimited) ‘things (films, records...) pitched at kids’; it’s also Bill Murray and Purple P a in and Pee Wee Herman and rock ’n’ roll - anything that gives you (no matter your actual age) that ‘kick’ which is half ‘craziness’ (rebellion, vulgarity) and half innocence (optimism, idealism). It ’s just too easy to score points by diagnosing the progressive ‘juvenilization’ ofpopular culture (as Thomas Doherty does in his otherwise useful book Teenagers an d Teenpics), whilst not grasping that at least half our total culture, now more than ever, is

14 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

FACING PAGE: LAYNE (CRISPIN GLOVER) AND FECK (DENNIS HOPPER) IN TIM HUNTER'S R/VER'S EDGE, A TOUGH, DISTURBING TEEN MOVIE; AND

AIDAN QUINN AS REBEL JOHNNY ROURKE IN RECKLESS, DIRECTED BY JAMES FOLEY AND WRITTEN BY CHRIS COLUMBUS. CINEASTE THOUGHT IT "TOO

ABSURD TO DISCUSS". BELOW: PHOEBE CATES AND JENNIFER JASON LEIGH IN AMY HECKERLING'S FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. FOR ROBIN

WOOD IT "CONSTRUCT(S) A POSITION FOR THE FEMALE SPECTATOR THAT IS NEITHER MASOCHISTIC NOR MERELY COMPLIANT". AND, A WHOLESOME

LITTLE TEEN FILM: CRAZY FOR YOU. LOUDEN (MATTHEW MONDINE) AND THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS (LINDA FIORENTINO).

necessarily, vitally ‘juvenile’. The teen movie, like other youth culture phenomena, is about survival, and a (very small, very fragile) means to survival.

So there’s the first noble, necessary task made possible by paying in-depth attention to the teen movie: an understanding of youth culture in all its extensions and implications.

2. More particularly to do with the films themselves, and with the forms of popular cinema, I believe we need to think again, and more comprehensively, about that mysterious thing called ‘entertainment’. Most critics seem to assume they know what entertainment is, what it consists o f and how it works; critics like Robin Wood, once they’ve schematically redeemed a film like Fast Times for marxist-feminism, always add a feeble ‘yes, well, it’s also entertaining’ clause, which gets us precisely nowhere on that score. Yet the teen movie is a principal entertainment form, and it works through this fact at every second, on every level: emotional energy, gags, comedy of manners, image-sound relations, actors animating their stereotypes, games with fictional premises, spectacular mixing of genre elements... To supremely value, before really looking at the whole field, the dazzling teen movies of Foley, Reiner or Hughes is to risk missing the opportunity to under­stand the very delicate interplay o f convention and invention in even the most apparently gross, least subtle popular films.

Chalk that one up for a hopeful future: a better, more complete theory o f popular entertainment.

3. As with any popular, commercial genre, the fun only really starts when you get that truly in-depth sense o f hundreds of films bouncing/ feeding/ripping off each other, mutually creating each other in a network. At that moment, all distinctions between good and bad, accomplished and botched, coherent and incoherent movies start to break down - mercy! - or at least become less significant, less telling, less determining o f one’s critical system. This is reminiscent of what Philip Brophy once said o f popular music: “even the fakest, stupidest, most negative example of Rock or Pop does have something to tell us about Rock and Pop in general”.7 Naturally, since we’re talking about cultural significance, not cultural ‘worth’; and trying to grasp the flows and swirls of culture rather than its qualitative ‘milestones’. Out with auteurs and masterpieces then, and while we’re at it, out with privi­leged ‘authentic’ examples as well (as in: ‘M organ’s Cake is a true, real teen movie’); even the fakest, stupidest teen movie can be energetic and sublimely celebratory of its own fakeness.

So that’s two more things at stake in a study of the teen movie: a theory of genre in popular film; and a mode, a working method, of non-evaluative criticism, so sorely needed in these sourpuss times.

4. The teen movie has its own wonderful, stylized sense of ‘the everyday’, and everyday life. Not necessarily your or my everyday life; but, in contrast to other movies and movie-types, a certain loose, tangled weave of characters and events, an attention to incidents and relations o f working life, leisure life and family fife, an overall texture which registers as everyday-like. Within its fictions, the teen movie has a lot to say about accommodating to the everyday, about making it a tolerable place in which to five. This is certainly part of the genre’s ‘conservatism’, but conservatism is itself something worth grappling with non-moralistically for a change; as Raymond Durgnat suggests, “an important job o f art is to register the way people actually experience things, as distinct from how the critic might wish them to do so”. 8 This is not to say, however, that the teen movie, with its reduced utopianism, is entirely static and free from complications or crises: on the contrary, the genre is full o f fascinating poignancies and stresses, all kinds o f quiet, daily palpitations of the personal-social world. That, I suspect, is about half o f what makes it popular.

One for the road, then: an immersion in teen movies might sensitize us to all that is modest, fleeting, fragile in popular cinema, and popular culture. Does that sound so uneventful, so unpromising? Not to my ears, at any rate.

I ’m well aware that I ’ve been using the teen movie here as a kind of ‘case’.One could just as well open up some of the above- marked areas - popular entertainment, genre, fan­tasy and the everyday - by recourse to some other form; you name it. Or one could as easily pick fights with the going ‘schools’ and available methodolo­gies of film criticism di- reedy, without the need at all to wrangle over a con­tested cinematic object, despised by one player, loved and defended by the other. But if the teen movie indeed provides a juicy, opportune case study, it doesn’t amount to just simply that: as itself, the teen movie has its own broad specificity, its own ‘aesthetic’, its own pleasure and its own history. Why bother with the teen movie? It exists, it’s popular. What more reason do you need?

These ideas, and others, are developed at length in Adrian Martin’s booklet The Teen Movie: A n Introduction, to be published by Swinburne Institute o f Technology and the Australian Film Commission later this year.

NOTES1. For typical put-downs o f the teen movie, see Armond White, “Kidpix”, Film Comment, August 1985; Elayne Rapping, “Hollywood’s Youth Cult Films”, Cineaste 1/2, 1987/ 88; and Philippe Royeur, “Coca-Cola Kids”, Positif307, September 1986. Defences o f the genre are rarer (hence the piece you’re reading), but definitely see Denis Wood, “Seeing and Being”, Film Quarterly, Spring 1986, an article which looks like it was shoved into the ‘Letters’ section for daring to praise The Breakfast Club and Weird Science as truly political films.2. The analyses I am referring to here are: Matthew Bernstein and David Pratt, “Comic Ambivalences in Risky Business", Film Criticism, Spring 1985; Susan Morrison, “Getting a Fix On the 60s: Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers Revisited”, CineAction! 12, Spring 1988; and Robin Wood, chapter 10 o f his Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, Columbia University Press, 1986. See also Bryan Bruce’s teen-related articles in most issues o f Cine Action!.3. Denis Wood, “As Sand on the Beach: Critical Commentary on Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood’s Corvette Summer", Journal o f Popular Film and Television, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1979.4. Peter Wollen, “Thinking Theory”, Film Comment, August 1988.5. T.L . French [Bill Krohn], “Les Cahiersdu Cinema 1968-1977: Interview with Serge Daney”, The Thousand Eyes 2, 1977.6. The best statement on this is by William Routt, “Creature”, Stuffing: Film: Genre, 1987. A different version o f this piece by Routt appears as “The Menace” in Substance 55 ,1 9 8 8 .7. Philip Brophy, “Editorial (kind of...)”, Restuff: Rock &Pop Culture, 1988.8. Raymond Durgnat, “Hollywood Turns to the Citizens Band”, Films, December, 1981.

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 15

A N

I N T E R V I E W

W I T H

C R A I G

M O N A H A N

C O N D U C T E D B Y P A U L H A R R I S / C H R I S B R O P H Y A N D G E O F F R E Y G A R D N E R

16 c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

LEFT: DAVID ATKINSON'S

COMPUTER ANIMATION, THE WHEEL

(1989), MADE AT SWINBURNE.

THE AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY has for close to two decades occupied a respectable cultural position. Production has be­come, within certain limits, quite stable. This can hardly be said,

however, about the animation sector. Since 1912, when the first Australian animation was done by Harry Julius, through to the present, the animator’s lot has been one of skimpy production standards, overseas domination, lack of audience interest and a failure to have the art of the animated film taken seriously by the wider industry.

There have been some triumphs: Bruce Petty’s Oscar for Leisure; Yoram Gross’s cracking the international market on his own terms and finally getting the Australian fauna up against the Northern Hemi­sphere rabbits, ducks, mice, dogs and so on; and the Swinburne Film School’s using its ancient steam-powered equipment to churn out a bewildering collection o f new faces. But these victories tend to pale away alongside the tales o f woe, the aborted projects, the series never taken up and the films that simply never get shown.

Nevertheless, there is a marvellous story to tell about all those who battled away in their poorly equipped studios, or simply on their own. And the threads of this tale have been pieced together by Craig Monahan, a Film, Radio and Television School graduate and former producer of SBS’s Rock Around the World. He spent two years on the research and uncovered people such as the Owen brothers and Harry Julius, who had long been forgotten, and went through to the present where animation is taking on a new lease of life via the computer and the rock clip. Filming and editing took a further year.

The result is A nim ated , a film in which 75 years of animation history is rolled into 80 breathless minutes. The film adopts an engagingly funny, slightly serious, sometimes off-the-wall approach to the assembly of the material, eschewing the conventional history/ anthology concept. It races from 1912, when cartoons were done to comment on newsreel material, past Eric Porter, the Owen brothers, Bruce Petty, Yoram Gross and Alex Stitt, and on to the present of Steve French, Bruce Currie and the computer video groups. It has lots of Australian animals, though one may have trouble recognizing Willie as a wombat. All in all it is a singular contribution to reviving some moments o f Australian history which lay buried even deeper than most.

QUESTION: Have you always been interested in animation?CRAIG MONAHAN: Yes, though I never wanted to be an animator. But it seemed to me you could do anything in animation if you had the the imagination.

I grew up with The Bugs Bunny Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons and that style o f television. I was lucky: imagine growing up today with

e I N E M A P

Neighbours, Perfect Match, Home and Away and other such programs, which breed so-called normality but really inspire mediocrity.

To the animator and the fan, animation is close to music and poetry. You can do things that you couldn’t possibly get away with in live action, both in style and content. You can comment or satirize without necessarily offending anyone, while at the same time making people more aware. In A n im ated , for instance, you see an incredible variety of styles and subject matter, all of which reflect the many changes in our political and social attitudes.

Despite this, animation is still seen as a bit of a novelty - particu­larly in Australia, where animation is judged on how it compares to Disney. In Europe and Canada it is considered an art form, and even in America people have broken with the Disney style and been accepted. For example, in cinemas today we are seeing the ‘cartoon movie’. By that I mean the filmmaking quality: Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice and Batm an , which I can’t wait to see. QUESTION: How did you approach making a film about animation in Australia?C.M.: I didn’t really want to do a purely archival film, with a presenter.I wanted to try and make a film which was much more layered. I conceived it on three levels. The first was the animation itself. Then come the filmmakers as individuals and, third, the group o f animators I organized to “do lunch”. That was a hoot. We set the camera up on tracks about 10 metres away and let them eat, drink and be merry. It was great fun and quite revealing.QUESTION: There is an interesting comment in the film from Ann Jollife, when she says that she has never been in a room with more than three animators. It is a pretty solitary profession fiddling away with drawings, clay, paper or, nowadays, a computer.C.M.: A lot of the animators have this librarian feel to them. They are very quiet. I thought if we could get that quality on camera it would be good. One of the things that comes across is that they are quite normal people.QUESTION: Were you at all daunted by the amount of research that faced you: the chasing of rights, hunting for footage and so on?C.M.: No, because I was very interested in the subject and very keen to make a film. I had been wallowing in music video and commercials for far too long. But every time I tried to get a film off the ground, I didn’t have much success. So, I decided to start doing the research myself. Then other people became interested and the whole thing just gathered momentum.QUESTION: Did you discover much material that you didn’t know existed?C.M.: Yes. I wasn’t really aware of the Owen Brothers, or of Pat Sullivan’s relationship to Felix the Cat. And I certainly wasn’t aware of

A P E R S 7 5 17

Harry Julius or that Lloyd Rees used to work for him.Bill Collins says in the film that the chances of the early animators’

work being seen or exhibited in a fair and proper manner were very slim. He’s right, because of the exhibition and distribution cartels at the time and the fact that it was basically a hobby for these people. There was no way that anybody could make a living purely from animation. All o f them had to do something else. The Owen brothers, for example, did titles for other newsreels or films, and also ran a graphic design studio. More or less it is the same today.

Many of the great artists and illustrators of the time worked for Smith and Julius studios at some stage or other. The Julius studio, for instance, used to do a lot o f illustrations for The Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly. And if the people weren’t working directly for the newspaper, they would be working for Julius. He used to do ads for newspapers as well.

I love the way newspaper cartoonists can sum up 1,000 years, or what happened yesterday afternoon, in one drawing and caption. I think that animation on television could be used in the same way. At the end of my film, I raise the question of why animation isn’t used more for analysis on television, like it is with newspapers. Given Bruce Petty’s work, and Rubbery Figures, it is more than possible. QUESTION: Another discovery for you was Dick Ovenden, who did King Billy.CM .: Few people know anything about him. He worked for the Shell Company, and also did the odd illustration. He used to sell his paintings at the horse races on a Saturday morning. Apart from King Billy, the only other animation he did was a couple of shorter things. It was much more of a hobby for him than the Owen brothers and people like them. His style is especially good for Australia at that time (c. 1933).QUESTION: What was the reaction from the old animators when you begun hunting for this material?C.M.: Most people thought the film would be a waste o f time because they had no idea that there had ever been an animation industry. A few people were very co-operative, but most didn’t know where I could start.

Initially, most of the information came from my interviews with past and present animators. After this, the Australian Film Institute and Australian Film Commission scoured through their lists o f films and filmmakers, and I used their information to get hold o f newspaper material. Once I put together a coherent list, I contacted the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).

The NFSA was able to put me onto some Harry Julius material.It was part of the news­reel of the day, the Australasian Gazette.There are dozens of those in the NFSA, but they have only been able to preserve or copy a few. It ’s all nitrate. It was a bit disappointing that the only ones I could get of Harry Julius were the four or five that had been preserved. There are many more waiting to be done, when money becomes available.QUESTION: Was there any material you couldn’t use because o f copy­right problems?C.M.: The Beatles was one. A few of the episodes o f the TV series were done in Australia in the early Sixties. But we couldn’t use them because it would have cost too much money. As well, several American series from the Sixties, such as CoolMcCool, Beetle Bailey and K razyK at , are owned by King Features, which would only let us use stills. QUESTION: Was a series like The Beatles really Australian?C.M.: Well, the scripts and voice tracks came from America. But that series, and others like it, did foster and train a new generation of animators.

On the other hand, the introduction of television to Australia saw us start to lose some of our national identity. We were tempted to ignore our own surroundings and there were subtle changes in our fives. I don’t think it is anything new to say that Australian television is a vehicle for cultural imperialism, whatever you may think of the quality of some o f it.

Before television, our animators used a tremendous amount of the Australian flora and fauna, even if people followed the Disney style. At least they were drawing wombats, koalas, kangaroos and so on. But after television, when the stations could purchase US and UK product for a fraction o f the cost of local material, we had to listen to American rabbits. It wasn’t until Yoram Gross in the 1970s that we got the return o f Australian characters.QUESTION: There is a title at one point which reads ‘Hanna Barbera 1972-1988’.C.M.:Disney has bought Hanna Barbera Australia. It doesn’t have an animation studio in America. The only one it owns now is here. They are making things like Winnie The Pooh. All the layouts and boarding

18 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

FACING PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT:

YORAM GROSS SITTING IN FRONT OF A

MONITOR SHOWING HIS DOT AND THE

BUNNY. (PHOTO: ROBERT MACFARLANE).

HARRY JULIUS'S CARTOONS OF THE MOMENT

(C. 1923) FROM THE AUSTRALASIAN GAZETTE.

DICK OVENDON'S KING BILLY'S FIRST CAR

(C. 1953). AND BRUCE PETTY'S CAREFUL

KOALA (1952), MADE FOR THE OWEN

BROTHERS. ( IT WAS HIS FIRST JOB.)

are down here, but they are painted and traced in Japan and other places.

Who Fram ed Roger R abb it?, for example, was made by the Disney studios, but it was done by freelancers all over the world, though mostly in England. There was an ad in Variety last week

trying to get animators to go and live in Ireland to work for Disney. QUESTION: How does the modern generation o f animators compare with their predecessors?C.M.: The most obvious comparison is that filmmakers and animators continue to experiment and take risks and look for new ways to do things. But people still have to survive. As in the past, they have to do commercials, titles and whatever else. The only alternative is to get a job working for one o f the studios doing somebody else’s series or specials.

There was a 10- or 15-year period when for a filmmaker to be making ads or somesuch was regarded as selling out. That’s changing and it is starting to go back the other way. And it’s something that is explored in A nim ated , because there is an argument about where craft finishes and art begins. I think you have to keep working so that you continue to learn and improve your craft while working towards the chance to do the projects you want to do.

Bruce Currie, whose animated films have received recognition around the world, has been doing openers for SBS. Steve French works on commercials in between producing some o f the punchiest and funniest animation around. It is the reality of the animation industry.

I think it important to point out that, in my opinion, the most interesting work in content and style is coming from the Swinburne animation course, or indeed from those who have graduated from it and are now part o f the industry. Swinburne is unique in that it offers experience in not only conventional styles o f animation - i.e., cell, cut­

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out - but also claymation and computer animation.All o f these people, including those from Swinburne and in the

mainstream, still suffer from not getting their films seen, the same problem Eric Porter and others had 40 years ago.QUESTION: Do many animators have a great feature somewhere in the back o f their minds?C.M.: Yes. But to make a feature-length animated film is very, very expensive, and it takes at least a couple o f years.QUESTION: One area you raise near the end o f A nim ated is animation in rock videos.C.M.: For a long time, music videos were seen as silly things by the community and television programmers, whereas young filmmakers knew from the start it was the only place where they could experiment. It is terrific because musicians don’t like to be told what to do, and they are quite happy for you to do whatever you want.

Lucinda Clutterbuck’s and Lyn-Maree Milburn’s work, for ex­ample, is light years away from conventional animation. They are two filmmakers in this country whose work in music videos is breaking new ground and is recognized around the world.

Music videos are an outlet for people who were going crazy because they didn’t want film to have rules. Now it’s gone full circle with every advertiser saying, “I want it to look like this music video I saw.” Now they all religiously watch MTV.

I think you can also see the influence o f the music video in most areas o f cinema, such as editing, lighting and pacing.QUESTION: Do you see music videos as the new tyranny, with Saturday morning cartoons being replaced by the MTV videos?C.M.: When I think about the future o f animation on TV, I like to think positively. Programmers really have opportunities to use these arts, not just tolerate them on things like MTV. Animation doesn’t have to be seen as something for kids. Animation covers as many ideas and subjects as live action. We should be able to see some of it. I feel that perhaps TV programmers don’t know how to handle it. TV can do anything now, so why not animation. ■

C&.

M E LB O U R N E : SYDNEY:JO H N FLEM IN G 690 7499 M IC H A E L M U R R AY 888 9977

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 19

ReviewbyL iz -Jacka

Feast ofEDENS LOST:

AN ANTIPODEAN

BRIDESHEAD,

A BLUE MOUNTAINS

DYNASTY , OR

ART TELEVISION?

ABOVE: ANGUS (BRUCE HUGHES)

IS INVITED BY EVE ST. JAMES (JULIA BLAKE)

TO STAY AT THE ST. JAMES HOTEL IN THE BLUE

MOUNTAINS. NEIL ARMFIELD'S EDENS LOST.

FACING PAGE: STEVIE (LINDA CROPPER)

TERRORIZES HERSELF AND ANGUS AS

THEY HURTLE DOWN A BLUE

MOUNTAINS COAL STRIP.

densDENS LO ST is one o f the first of the classy co-produced mini-series to emerge from Sandra Levy’s revamped drama policy at the AB C, although it has a long pre-ABC genesis. The project originated with producer Margaret Fink, and there is the usual story of a long gestation period, difficulty in finding funding, and the ordeal gone through to bring this “masterpiece to the screen” (cf. My

Brilliant Career and For Love Alone). It is a co-production between the ABC, Margaret Fink, and Central Independent Television of the U K - for the latter, the first production from its newly formed film arm to reach the screen.

Unlike most Australian mini-series, Edens Lost is carefully positioned at the high cultural end of the market; it deliberately proposes itself as what John Caughie has called “art television” 1. It was publicized both here and in the UK as a prestige production; its subject- matter was described as the “raw-edged” sexual and emotional conflicts of an “elegant” upper-class family, promising beautiful images, stylish settings, lovely clothes and literate dia­logue. The quote from Britain’s Time Out magazine, quoted in the ABC’s press kit, is typical: “High-class three-hour British/Australian adaptation ofSumner Locke Elliot’s novel o f class, clash and collapse ... Perfectly paced, stunningly shot and consistently compulsive ... mini­series don’t come much better than this.” And as another extract from the press kit reminds us, with its “7.1 million viewers - Brideshead 3.25 million viewers”, comparisons with the landmark production of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited are inevitable.

There are a number o f parallels: both are adaptations o f well-regarded novels, both are stories about the privileged classes from the point o f view o f one from humbler origins, although, unlike the aristocrats of Brideshead, the St. James family is merely well-off upper middle-class. Both are about the elegant facade o f a family being broken down and revealing the conflicts, hatred and downright pathology that exists within; both have glacially beauti­ful matriarchs as central characters, both have rather gormless lower-class male protagonists who provide the voyeuristic identification point for audiences, and who, paradoxically, are the

2 0 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

witnesses and interpreters o f the family secrets. Both exploit an audience’s fascination for spying on the upper classes and their strange, perverse ways, both offer the delightful pleasure o f exploring dark and alluring skeletons in cupboards. And both depend on a nostalgia for the loss o f times more leisured, more elegant, more measured, even if fatally flawed. Everything about the style of both - the legendary languor o f Brideshead, the loving preoccupation with decor, settings, clothes, the stately pans and vaguely Debussian music in Edens Lost - is elegiac, has a slightly bitter, yet somehow comfortable, even sentimental sense o f mourn­ing for the loss o f a past that never quite existed.

Margaret Fink has specialized in bringing Australian classic novels to the screen: first Miles Franklin, then Christina Stead, and her next project is said to be Jessica Anderson’s Tirra L irm By The River. Although a produc­tion for television, Edens Lost has a definite cinematic flavour about it. As Caughie defines it, art television is precisely that area o f high-quality TV drama in which the visual rhetoric o f cinema dominates, rather than the script- dominated rhetoric o f television. Edens Lost is certainly unlike any other mini-series made in Australia, both in subject-matter and in style. It does not have the rather literal televisual narrative style that characterizes the mini-series: it resembles art cinema in its held-back emotional tone, its at times somewhat cryptic narrative exposition, the fact that it is entirely an ‘internal’ piece, based solely on inner

C I N E M A

psychological exploration (though with the occasional melodramatic dei ex m achine to precipitate psychological development, e.g. the killing of Cissie’s dog), and with much of the content being conveyed through mise-en-scene devices rather than directly.

The question for a critic than is how to ‘read’ Edens Lost. Is it art television, is it melodrama, is it high-quality soap? What do we make of this artful production of a story of a spoilt middle-class family and its agonies and tragedies during the years of the Second World War?

In some ways, the answer to the question must lie in an approach to the novel which is the source material. It is surely interesting to note how often Sumner Locke Elliot has been adapted for the screen, compared with other Australian authors. The current series follows the 1980 mini­series of Elliot’s 1977 novel

Water Under the Bridge and the 1983 feature version o f Careful, He Might H ear Tou (first published 1963). Edens Lost is in fact considered to be the continuation of the autobiographical themes begun in Careful. In EdensLostxht young P.S. of Carefulis replaced by a version of the author’s persona in the character o f Angus (Bruce Hughes), the young man left friendless and alone after his Aunt’s death, and invited with a murmured, “Come to us” into the family by the alluring and mysterious Eve St. James (Julia Blake).

P A P E R S 7 5 2 i

EDENS LOST IS CERTAINLY UNLIKE ANY OTHER

MINI-SERIES MADE IN AUSTRALIA ... IT RESEMBLES

ART CINEMA IN ITS HELD-BACK EMOTIONAL TONE, ITS

AT TIMES SOMEWHAT CRYPTIC NARRATIVE

EXPOSITION ... AND WITH MUCH OF THE CONTENT

BEING CONVEYED THROUGH MISE-EN-SCENE

DEVICES RATHER THAN DIRECTLY.

RIGHT: STEVIE AND COLONEL

GABRIEL IMRE (EDWARD WILEY)

FOR WHOM SHE LEAVES

HER HUSBAND.

FACING PAGE:

AN OLDER ANGUS.

The screen adaptation follows the structure o f the novel fairly faithfully; like the novel it is structured into three quasi-autonomous parts, entitled ‘Angus’, ‘Bea’ and ‘Eve’ after the char­acter from whose point of view each is told.However in the novel there are slippages both of viewpoint and thematic incident between parts which give it a slightly eerie feel of echoes and layers o f memory. In one part we are given one fragment of an incident: for example, Stevie’s ride on the ‘funicular’ with Angus (in Part 1) whose full import is only revealed when it is re­remembered in Part 3.

It is a mixture o f realism and a more modern­ist set o f gestures - it has something of the internal monologue struc­ture familiar from Woolf or the Joyce o f Portrait o f the Artist as a Young M an , notably in Elliot’s habit o f switching times in mid­sentence as a memory swirls up in the consciousness o f the character whose ‘voice’ is currently carrying the narration.

A good deal o f the strangeness o f the novel has been ironed out by not preserving these startling juxtapositions - only Eve’s culminating narrative (of her falling in love with Heath) is handled in a way that juxtaposes past and present, but this is done byway of the more normal and accustomed flashback technique, with the past being conveniently doubly marked for us by being photographed in the pseudo-antique sepia style o f the time.

The first part of Edens Lost tells the story of Angus’s introduction to the St James family, and his infatuation with the cool Eve St James. Eve tells Angus the story o f the judge’s disgrace which has led to the family’s isolation in the Blue Mountains and to the judge’s delicate state, where the family humour him by inventing elaborate courtroom and literary games in which Heath (Arthur Dignam) can again play out a kind of parody of his former judicial power. The family members are introduced: Stevie (Lynda Cropper), the eldest daughter, beautiful, spoilt, contemptuous, idle, with a vicious tongue; Bea (Victoria Longley), the second daughter, less beautiful, large, clever and too forthright for her own good; and Tip (Yves Stening), the son, ostensibly courting the unfortu­nate Lesley-Ann (Melanie Salo­mon) but also conducting a semi­secret affair with Liesl (Fiona Press), the Austrian maid, and even less reconciled than the others to the family conspiracy to preserve Heath’s illusions. Finally, there are two significant hangers-on: Cissie (Jennifer Claire), Eve’s old friend, the ex-Rexona Girl, who, like all Eve’s other waifs and strays, has been collected and brought into the family, and who is part of a strange reversed relationship whose surface structure conceals who is really dependent on whom; and Marcus (Philip Sayer) the sexually ambiguous and exquisitely sensitive hotel manager, who it turns out (rather implausibly) is Stevie’s one true love and the reason neither o f her subsequent marriages work.

The structure o f Episode 1 is the most melodramatic, Cissie and Angus being the key figures. Like all outsiders in such fictions, Angus becomes the ear to everyone’s secrets, and after Cissie confesses to him

that she had a brief but non-sexual liaison with Heath at the time of his disgrace, Angus accidentally lets this information fall in front of Eve. This is the first major crack in the structure; Eve’s life-long work o f being the perfect wife, o f devoting herself to fulfilling Heath’s every desire, is abruptly called into question, and in revenge Eve sends Cissie’s beloved dog to be put down. Only Angus knows the reason, and it precipitates his disillusionment with the fantasy of the St James family’s perfection and his descent into cynical and sponging medioc­rity, although as subsequent parts reveal he can never quite separate himself from the family. Angus starts as the admiring, goggle-eyed voyeur, and ends up in Episode 3 as the witness and interpreter o f the final disintegration of the family, or rather of the family romance.

Episode Two is Bea’s story, and occurs in Sydney at the end of the War. Bea is now a successful writer of radio soap opera, pen-name D .K (for “don’t know”) Durfee. Shattered by a bitter fight with Marcus, she has a brief affair with a visiting US officer, Corey Orcutt (Patrick Quinn), urbane, sensitive and, unfortunately for Bea, mother-fixated. This Episode also updates us on Stevie’s situation: now married to the dull suitor of Episode 1, Bill Seward (Andrew Tighe), conveniently posted overseas, and the mother o f a daughter, Stevie is having an affair with a wealthy but boring US army major, Gabriel Imre (Ed Wiley).

We also meet up again with Angus, now pompous and prematurely middle-aged, who has teamed up with Lesley-Ann, and is planning to go mining in the Northern Territory. Again, it is Angus who unwit­tingly plays his role o f shatterer o f family illusions, by revealing to Bea the reason why Eve had Cissie’s dog destroyed.

But the episode belongs to Bea. Two major incidents structure it: the first is the phone conver­

sation Bea attempts with Eve after her fight with Marcus, in which Eve does her usual trick of refusing to hear anyone’s (other than Heath’s) need or distress; the second is the night Bea finally spends with her US Captain in which, knowing already it will fall on deaf ears, she declares her love for him, saying: “ ...nobody around me has ever said exactly what they mean and I ’ve never said exactly what I mean and there’s got to be one time when you do, otherwise what’s it all for?” The Episode ends with Bea staggering out o f the hotel into the street, with the words of the hotel manageress ringing in her ears, “Don’t ever show you face here again! ”, and finding the war has ended and that the street is full o f what is for Bea mindless rejoicing, dancing and kissing. Bea lurches up the street, mouth gaping wide, apparently in shared

EDENS LOST CAN BE SEEN AS A STORY OF THE

UNSATISFIABILITY OF FEMALE DESIRE, AND THE

INABILITY OF THE WOMEN EVER TO ARTICULATE

THIS DESIRE. FOR ALL THREE OF THE CENTRAL

WOMEN CHARACTERS, EVE, STEVIE AND BEA,

THERE IS THE PROBLEM OF BEING SILENCED...

22 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

F E A S T E D E N SO F

jubilation, although really, as we know, in wordless grief for this love, and all love, permanently lost. The soundtrack o f cheering drowns out any utterance o f hers.

I f Episode 1 is the most gothic and melodramatic in structure and tone and Episode 2 the most naturalistic, the third is the most concentrated and formally rigorous. Apart from an early passage comprised o f a number o f quick short scenes which establish the recent history of the main characters, all o f it consists o f a couple o f long sequences, the first o f which explores Stevie’s current state o f mind, and the second o f which is a long monologue in which Eve finally explains her marriage, her family and herself to the ubiquitous witness, Angus. The Episode is set after the war: Heath has died, Stevie has abandoned husband and daughter to marry Gabriel Imre and has taken up residence with him in a stately and luxurious Long Island mansion, where Eve is on a long visit, the purpose o f which is undoubtedly to help patch up a failing marriage. Eve, as usual, is too frozen in her own detached self-construction to be any help to anyone. Stevie is depicted as a perennially dissatisfied, petulant child (she calls Gabriel “daddy” just as Eve has previously so addressed Heath), contemptuous and bitchy as ever, until one night during dinner Gabriel explodes, “Stephanie - just tell me what you want?” (shades of Freud’s famous “What do women want?”) and departs the mansion for ever. Eve decides to make a hasty departure now that things have become messy, and when Angus rounds on her and accuses her of being cold and unfeeling, Eve finally insists on telling her story: “I must tell you about Heath St fames.”

Sumner Locke Elliot is a strangely anachronistic author. He has

lived in New York for more than 40 years: the novel, published from there in 1969 at the height of Black Power, Women’s Liberation, the hippie movement and the “sexual revolution”, has the feel and style of something written much closer to the time o f its setting - the 1930s and 1940s. It ’s as if Elliot, in writing about a place he has not seen for 20 years, can only conceptualize it as it was then, and oddly the style of writing and tone and sensibility o f the novel are fixed in that time too. Since the series is largely such a faithful adaptation of the novel (with a few small but significant differences), it raises the same problem for a critic of how to position oneself vis-a-vis a commentary on it. In some ways it is almost as anachronistic as, say Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which, in its film adaptation, was made so brilliantly, sharply and painfully contemporary, in spite of its exquisitely authentic costumes and settings. Is it appropriate to take Edens Lost similarly seriously as a textual object, or better simply to dismiss it as high-class soap opera, or to read it in the superficial way the critics and publicists did, as being simply a slightly titillating look at upper middle-class perversions (a la the Blue Mountains drawing-room melodramas of the McDonagh sisters).

In spite o f the series definitely proposing itself in both o f these ways, I believe that on balance, it is possible to see something more interesting and more contemporary than this in it. The following reading of Edens Lost does depend on a supplementation of the television text by a reading of the novel; in the television version certain themes more fully developed in the novel remain latent and barely hinted at, and the complexity o f mise-en-scene is not sufficient to fill the gap left by overt narration. This leaves the television text at times

rather cryptic and ultimately empty. In particular, Eve’s crucial final monologue has the feeling of anti­climax about it - a feeling in the audience of, “So What?”, when it should be both the explanation and the culmination of the tragedy that has gone before.

THE FEMININE / HYSTERIA / SILENCE

Since there is no doubt that hysteria has a strong affinity with femininity, just as obsessional neurosis has with masculin­ity, it appears probable that, as a deter­minant o f anxiety, loss o f love plays much the same p art in hysteria as the threat of castration does in phobias and fear o f the super-ego in obsessional neurosis. FREUD, “INHIBITIONS, SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY”, SE, VOL. XX P. 143 (MY EMPHA­SIS).

We might say that the Absolute Woman, in culture, the woman who really repre­sents femininity most effectively ... who is closest to femininity as prey to mascu­linity, is actually the hysteric ... he makes her image for her!...The hysteric is a divine spirit that is always at the edge, the turning point o f making. She is one who does not make herself.... The hys­teric “makes - believe” the father...

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 2 3

F E A S T E D E N SO F

Without the hysteric there’s no father.....She is given images that don’tbelong to her, and she forces herself, as we’ve all done, to resemble them. H ELENE CEXOUS, “CASTRATION OR DECAPITATION”, SIGNS, VOL. 7, NO. 1, 1981, P 47

Edens Lost is a women’s picture, in several senses. It is fill] o f women characters: even though Angus is in some sense the central character in a structural sense because o f his role as outsider/witness /inter­preter the series begins and ends in a circular movement (characteris­tic of the women’s film2), the circle closed by the repetition of Angus’s first meeting with Eve, and her murmured invitation, “Come to us.” But it is the women who are central to the symbolic level o f the narrative: pre-eminently Eve, the mother, the archetypal eternal femi­nine, then the daughters, Stevie and Bea, the all-important Cissie, and Lesley-Ann. Heath, the father, the judge, should be the patriarchal centre o f the narrative, and o f course hermeneutically he has a primary role, because it is Eve’s originally pathological relationship to Heath that is supposed to explain the family saga, and to account for all the pathology which follows. But like the oddly impotent patriarch of Meet Me in St Louis, Heath is a failed patriarch; he has in some sense lost the power o f controlling speech since he has been displaced from his public role as judge, and he is suffering from some sort o f mysterious psychotic condition (manic-depression?). All the other men in the scenario are either coarse buffoons (Gabriel Imre, Bill Seward) or mother-fixated and thus emotionally crippled (Corey Orcutt) or hidden behind a bisexual mask which distances him from emotional in­volvement (Marcus).

Edens Lost can be seen as a story of the unsatisfiability o f female desire, and the inability of the women ever to articulate this desire. For all three o f the central women characters, Eve, Stevie and Bea, there is the problem of being silenced - Eve by Heath’s unspoken prohibi­tions and desire for a screen on which to project his own desire, Stevie by the fact that she appears to be constantly speaking in a language no one can understand, and Bea by the constraints of the familial and societal bans on honest expression.

Eve can only succeed in her desperate bid to snare Heath for a hus­band by literally remaining silent. She wins Heath from her rival, the “pretty vivacious girl” by betraying no hint o f emotion or demand.

“Silence: Silence is the mark of hysteria ... what talks isn’t heard because it’s the body that talks, and man doesn’t hear the body.”CEXOUS, OP. CIT., P. 49

Eve’s interpretation of Heath’s desires has made her into a creature of stone, unable to see anybody or anything except her own image which, putting herself in Heath’s place, she constantly adores. In her final monologue Eve explains: “I became neutral by degrees, I became all greys, I watched myself become a periphery around his edges; I sat as cool as stone...” In Episode 3 Eve is constantly shown gazing into mirrors, and admiring herself; there is the extraordinary scene in the aeroplane toilet where she looks in the mirror and laughs almost in ecstasy. In the TV version this is left as an act of pure narcissism; in the novel it is accompanied by an interior monologue which refer to her “feeling o f appalling excitement and joy at being summoned, wanted... roused from the dead.” Eve constantly performs herself as in perfect control o f every movement, every desire, even when alone, as in the scene o f Episode 3 where she slowly dresses for dinner in a white wool dress. The camera captures in close-up the putting on of the earrings, the belt, the brooch, each action performed with the measured perfection of a strange ritual.

Stevie’s hysteria is to demand too much, to drink too much, to let her vicious tongue run on and on, to destroy people and things; so Stevie is in a sense too noisy, but she too is never heard. At the end of Episode 3, she says almost the only real things she’s said in the whole

2 4 C I N E M A P

series; to Angus’s bafflement she says: “O f course you don’t get the point; nobody ever gets the point; no-one has ever got the point of me.”

Bea’s hysteria is to retreat into the fantasy world of her soap operas, of imagined desires and danger in strange exotic places. When she actually falls in love with Corey her soap opera imagination dries up; she cannot summon the fantasies. When Corey leaves she roams the streets during the Victory Celebration with her ecstatic or agonized face looking up (towards the camera in the sky), her mouth gaping with a repeated word that is drowned out by the sound o f the celebration but which the novel reveals as “Nothing. Nothing.”

THE MOTHER / THE ABANDONED CHILD / EDENS LOST

The attitude to women in Edens Lost is highly ambivalent: on the one hand the women characters are the most interesting, the most beau­tiful, they are admired for their style, wit, sensibility; their inability to articulate their desire or find fulfilment with their flawed men is explored sympathetically. On the other hand, the original sin o f the whole story is a failure o f mothering; Edens Lost is full o f bad mothers. Eve is the ultimate bad mother: she in effect abandons her children to devote herself to her great life’s work - that o f becoming Heath’s ideal; the children’s only role is to help preserve Heath’s illusory world. Eve’s tragedy is supposed to be that this great project was entirely mis­guided; Heath looks her straight in the eye as he is dying and says to her with his last breath, “Not you.” Stevie is also a bad mother: she abandons her own daughter, Miranda, to follow her lover to America - but Stevie, as Angus explains to us, is to be understood, if not forgiven, because she herself has suffered from bad mothering. Bea continually attempts both to obtain mothering from Eve and to mother her; when Cissie leaves, Bea says to her mother, “Never mind”, but Eve, with her most impassive look, says, “Never mind what?” And Bea has the misfortune to fall in love with a mother-fixated man, a man so attached to mother that he is unavailable for any other attachment. The less-developed character of Tip, the son, also has a particular relation to the mother. He abandons Lesley-Ann and the family values and snobbery to marry, beneath his class, the perfect Austrian Hausfrau- mother, Liesl, who proceeds to stuff him full o f dumplings and strudel. Significantly, Angus is the only character who is motherless (even Lesley-Ann has a mother who, Cissie hints, has a drinking problem); having lost his own mother at birth he has never known one. But having no mother is not much better than having a bad one. So for Sumner Locke Elliot, are the Edens that are lost the perfect union with the mother, ever sought but never found? And what do we make o f the tag on the novel (quoted in the TV version):

“Where the apple reddens Never pry-

Lest we lose our Edens,Eve and I .”

ROBERT BROWNING, A WOMAN’S LAST WORD

NOTES1. John Caughie, “Rhetoric, Pleasure and ‘Art Television’”, Screen, Volume 22 , No. 4, 1981, pp 9-312. See Tama Modleski, “Time and Desire in the Woman’s Film”, Cinema Journal, 23 No.3. Spring 1984, p. 23.

EDENS LOST: directed by Neil Armfield. Producer: Margaret Fink. Script: Michael Gow. Executive producers: Sandra Levy (ABC), Ted Childs (Central). Photography: Geoffrey Simpson. Editor: Bill Russo. Composer: Alan John. Cast: Julia Blake (Eve), Arthur Dignam (Heath) Lynda Cropper (Stevie), Victoria Longley (Bea), Jennifer Claire (Cissie), Bruce Hughes (Angus), Melanie Salomon (Lesley-Ann), Fiona Press (Liesl), Yves Stening (Tip), AndrewTighe (Bill Seward), Philip Sayer (Marcus), Patrick Quinn (Corey), Ed Wiley (Gabriel).

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C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

>- R E P O R T B Y J O H N B A X T E R

a ry Lam bert w o rk s out of a

retrofitted Tw enties build ing

in W est Los A ng eles

ca lled s im p ly O .

A R Y l_ A IVI

But if the lo fty Tw enties

sp ace suggests an y th in g /

it's an a rt g a lle ry or a re n e ­

gade ad . ag en cy .

Keith H aring and G erm an

C K D R E

E x p re ss io n ist posters

decorate the w a lls . And

th ere 's no a ir conditioning/

just a la rg e fan . In the

sh ad o w s/ a c luster of

honours/ including a L illian

G ish A w a rd in purp le

p e rsp e x and a G o lden Lion of

V en ice w ith its p laq u e still

unengraved/ g ath er dust.

G lam o u r is not the point.

R

LIKE H E R O FFIC E, Mary Lambert is unexpected: quiet, small, pale, with unsettling light green eyes. Maybe it’s the whoosh o f the fan, but the southern burr to her voice also seems more pronounced with acquaintance: “I ’m” comes out “ahm” and “time” as “tahm”. More obvious than these, however, is her steely control. Lambert has directed only two features, Siesta (1987) and Pet Sematary (1989), but, taken with her rock videos, which include Sting’s We’llBe Together Tonight, and many for Madonna, including

Borderline and this year’s Like a Prayer, with its controversial Christian

h — iconography, it’s a solid body o f work.B (She also directed one episode o f the

TV series Tales From the Crypt, and started work on Under the Cherry Moon,

taken over by its star, Prince, with disastrous results.)Lambert left Helena, Arkansas, for the Rhode Island School o f Design

(RISD) the year National Guardsmen shot four students at Kent State. “It was a crazy time to be going to college and to art school. There was no discipline on the campus at all. It was all revolution, Power to the People, performance art. You could blow up balloons and let them loose and say it was a painting.”

At RISD , David Byrne was creating performance art and forming Talking Heads. (The band’s bass and drummer, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, are still Lambert’s close friends.) Some o f the tuition was as radical

as the extra-curricular activities. Apho- tography lecturer forbade the use of brand-name chemicals. “He told us

m ™ Kodak was a corporate pig, teaching usthere was only one way to see colour. We processed the film and made the

prints, but we used things like piss and Jello. It was a great way to think, though it didn’t really help you get a job when you graduated.”

Lambert left with a painting degree, a taste for Wenders and Herzog, and an ambition to make short, personal films. She edited for Boston TV station W GBH, then migrated to Los Angeles, joining a friend’s special effects company. “I did animation and illustrations for different kinds o f film graphics. Then some computer graphic work, a small amount o f set design and art department-type things. But I quickly realized I ’m too messy.”

Looking for film work in Hollywood is never easy. “Sometimes I feel like the Fuller Brush Salesman, pounding the pavement, having meetings. ” And being a woman didn’t help. “I never believed that anything was going to hold me back, and certainly not my gender. I come from a great tradition of southern womanhood; man, those women run the place down there. After the Civil War, the men were all gone; the women just took it on, without apologies and without complaints. I have great role models in my mother and my aunts and my grandmothers. These wonderful women worked hard, loved everybody, didn’t complain, had a sense o f humour, laughed, made other people happy, did their work.

Only recently have I begun to feel that sexism does exist, in a big way. Most men really want to give you a chance — as long as you’re not in any way threatening them.”

Lambert finally got some TV commercials. “It isn’t the quick route into directing feature films the way it is in England. The commercials in this country were not sexy, funny, hip little narratives. It was a time o f big economic boom. Products were products, and you sold them like products. I ’m directing television commercials now again, and it’s changed a lot in 12 years. The industry here is so highly evolved, so compartmentalized and unionized, and the big studios have a very specific way they like to make

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

ABOVE: IN A DREAM

STATE: CLAIRE (ELLEN BARKIN)

LOST IN SPAIN IN HER BLOOD-

SOAKED DRESS. MARY LAMBERT'S

SIESTA; AND, GAGE (MIKO HUGHES) IN

PET SEMATARY, A LITTLE BOY, BUT

WITH THE SOUL OF A MONSTER.

FACING PAGE: JUD

(FRED GWYNNE), THE OLD

GAFFER, IN PET SEMATARY.

movies, and very specific guidelines for how a movie goes through production and how much money it has to make and what kind of markets it’s aimed at. It ’s all so over-thought-out that they’re usually looking for a director who fits a specific profile.”

From commercials, it was a short step into music videos. “This was what I ’d been doing at art school: little short, kinky films to music. I ’d been waiting 10 years for this to happen. I thought that when they came out with laser discs there was going to be a market for the kind of stuff I really enjoyed doing. It didn’t happen and nobody wanted short films, so I gave up on it. Then I turned around one day and there they were.”

Lambert’s first music video was for Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz aka The Tom Tom Club. It was based on As Above, See Below, a cut

from their Genius o f Love album. “It used almost documentary-style club footage to tell this slightly mystical story about the LA club scene. I shot in very grainy black and white because I didn’t have any money for lights or film. I was met by incredible opposition by managers of the record companies. Everyone thought music videos had to be in lush colour, just like a feature film or a commercial. And now everyone’s doing it.”

Rock videos pose novel problems. “When you’re shooting a narrative film or a commercial, you shoot the footage, then cut it to the rhythm of the images. I f it takes so long to walk across a room, and it feels good, you leave it long. When you have a song that you’re working with, maybe there’s a short musical break - a guitar riff or something - and it’s just perfect for that walk across the room. But if the riff is 10 seconds long and she doesn’t get to the door until 11.5 seconds, it’s awkward. You have to edit it very tightly in your head before you shoot it.”

Like a Prayer is Lambert’s favourite video so far. “It’s a combina­tion of everything I ’ve learned about filmmaking, about telling a story. And I really like the song. It said some fairly radical things that were fun to say, and were done in a big, national way, with some money to back it up. There was a lot of controversy: that it was anti-religion, sacrilegious. That made me smile, because I think that was just racism in disguise. What really upset people was the portrayal of a saint as a black man and the sexual thing between a white woman and a black man.”

Videos got Lambert into Linder the Cherry Moon, an unhappy ex­perience from which she emerged with the determination to make her own kind of films. From that came Siesta.

Shot in Spain, and based on the cryptic novel by Patrice Chaplin, Siesta follows professional dare-devil Claire (Ellen Barkin) as she flees the biggest stunt of her career, a free dive over Death Valley, to go to Spain, and the lover/mentor she abandoned years before.

The significance of what happens to Claire in Spain isn’t immedi­ately clear. She wakes up at the end of an airport runway in a blood­stained red dress, cadges a lift from a priapic cab driver (Alexei Sayle at his weirdest), falls in with a group of mindless trendies, including photographer Kit (Julian Sands) and heiress Nancy (Jodie Foster, with a convincing Kmghtsbridge accent), and finally tracks down ex-lover Augustine (Gabriel Byrne), only to be stabbed — to death, we assume - by his vengeful wife (Isabella Rossellini).

Lambert fills the film with baroque imagery o f Claire fleeing in her red dress through the gaudy Madrid day, coupling with Augustine in the sun-stunned hours of the siesta and falling in dreamy slow motion towards the desert from a plane. As in the video o f Like a Prayer,

2 8 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

THE BOOK'S VERY FRIGHTENING AND YOU CAN'T QUITE PUT YOUR FINGER ON WHY.

IT'S LIKE A DARK, SPOOKY PAINTING ... I HAD THIS STRONG VISUALIZATION OF IT IN MY

MIND ... IT'S VERY SPARE. IT'S ABOUT ARCHETYPAL IMAGES AND ICONS AND INSTITU­

TIONS: THE FAMILY AND DEATH. I KNEW I COULD DO IT AS SOON AS I READ IT.

MARY LAMBERT ON PET SEM ATARY

wounds open and close miraculously, churches and angels abound, and there’s a sustained sense o f mysticism and transcendence. The film’s dislocated flashback narrative wasn’t to the taste o f most critics, but Siesta’s visual power and its pumshing sense o f obsession transcend the often tortuous narrative.

Lambert found the script by accident in someone’s dressing room and fell in love with it. It came to her when Michelangelo Antonioni pulled out. “I determined that I was going to make a very personal movie in spite o f the fact that everybody told me not to do it. I knew there was going to be a limited audience for it and that some o f the objectives were going to be very difficult to achieve. But I still wanted to do it and I ’m very glad I did. Its failures are the failures of naivete and lack o f experience. Nothing in it was done to please somebody else or to seduce an audience. It was an honest effort.

“I do so much enjoy the dream state, and expressionistic ways of conveying an idea. I thought I could tell the story in a non-linear fashion and involve people in their own subconscious feelings, draw­ing them into the story that way. I wanted to create a dream state within the film that would allow the audience to accept what was happening on the screen and go with it, and learn the story in that way rather than the traditional way. I didn’t realize how hard it would be in a piece that length to fulfil my obligations to the audience. I think there are places where it’s very successful - the scenes between Claire and Nancy, for instance, which are very dreamlike.

“I wanted to do this whole movie from the point of view of the unconscious, o f a woman who may or may not be dead. And all the people she meets are basically angels or manifestations o f herself. I believe all the people in your dreams are just different aspects of your own personality that you’re attempting to understand.

“One way of looking at Siesta is that it’s the last 10 seconds of her life. It’s the way her life flashes in front of her as she’s dying. Most dreams take 10 or 15 seconds to happen, but I ’m sure everyone’s had a dream they thought must have gone on all night. Your unconscious is a great storyteller.”

Pet Sematary was an odd film to follow such a debut, but perhaps inevitable, given Lambert’s preoccupation with dream states and the imagination. One of the best adaptations yet o f a Stephen King chiller, it displays the King trademark of horror erupting from the conventional. No dungeons, no clanking chains: just a couple o f country houses, one occupied by an old gaffer, Jud (Fred Gwynne), and the other by the family o f a young doctor, Louis (Dale Midkiff), and a strip o f two-lane blacktop between.

But down the blacktop barrels a succession o f oil tankers. Periodically they flatten some dog or cat, which kids bury in the woods, at the end o f a narrow path to which the fog always seems to cling: the path to the old pet cemetery. But Jud takes Louis to an even older Indian graveyard further up the hill. I f you bury something there, he warns, it comes to life again, and very nastily too, as we find out when first the little boy’s cat is run over, then Gage (Miko Hughes) himself.

“The book’s very frightening and you can’t quite put your finger on why.It’s like a dark, spooky painting. After I ’d read the script [by King], I had this strong visualization o f it in my mind - of

the house and the road and the hill and the path and the mother and the father and the daughter and the son and the old man. It’s very spare. It ’s about archetypal images and icons and institutions: the Family and Death. I just knew I could do it as soon as I read it.”

The stiff, solemn formality of 18 th century New England naive portraits of children acts as a sinister counterpoint to the 20th century freedoms of Pet Sem atary- and when Gage is raised from the dead by his grieving father, he reappears as a knowing little adult from such a painting, complete with adult hat and cane.

The portraits were Lambert’s idea. “Children are frightened of the strangest things - a lot of the time by portraits, particularly those primitive New England creepy pictures where people are very stiff and death-like in their pose. Children are frightened of iconography: inanimate objects that represent animate objects. They’re still trying to figure out why one cat moves and one cat doesn’t.

“I had to think o f a way to make that little boy scary when he came back. Because he’s so beautiful and such a precious child I did not want to use a puppet. We did a lot of sketches o f what he might look like after the truck had run over him, and he just looked more and more like an old baseball or a watermelon that had been cracked open and badly put back together again. It wasn’t scary; it was just ludicrous. I felt the saddest and most terrifying thing would be to see this little boy come back as a little boy\ but with the soul of a monster.”

Pet Sematary is both a critical and commercial success, a rare outcome for genre movies. But rather than do more horror films, Lambert is directing a new video for Debbie Harry, and her next feature project is back in the rock world as well: a version of Pamela Des Barres’s scandalous confessions of her days as a groupie, I ’m With the Band.

Lambert acknowledges “The book has its tabloid side: how big people’s cocks are, and how many stars she’s slept with. We’ll have some of that in there, but the thrust of the movie is more like Diner: it’s about a group of young women at a crisis point in their lives, that point being the Sixties, and the milieu being rock ’n’ roll before it became an industry.” The steel comes back into Lambert’s green eyes and the Arkansas burr disappears. “It’s going to explore some aspects o f a society I know a lot about.” ■

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 2 9

P U R I T Y , M A S C U L

My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. Within me are the dark immemorial Forces of the Evil one, human and pre-human; within me too are the luminous forces, human and pre-human of God - and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.1NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

I know perfectly well that death is invin­cible. Man's worth, however, lies not in victory but in the struggle for victory.I also know this - which is more difficult. It does not even lie in the struggle for victory. Man's worth lies in one thing only - in this - that he live and die bravely without condescending to attempt any recompense. And I also know this third requirement which is more difficult yet. The certainty that no recompense exists must not make our blood run cold but must fill us with joy' pride and manly courage.2NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

*

jR e p o r t

by

L o r r a i n e M o r t i m e r

N I T Y A N D THE F L I G H T F R O M T H

IN THE ALREADY INFAMOUS ‘dream’ sequence o f Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation o f Christ, an English-accented nymphet angel/tempter tells Jesus that she doesn’t want his blood. He need suffer no more pain; he has done enough. He is not to look back

at the others, at that barren place o f suffering, o f crucifixion, he is being led to a new lush space, a garden of love and domesticity. Earlier in the desert, a woman/tempter/snake had asked him why he was trying to save the world, had told him to save himself and find love. She, the evil one, has signified the amoral, the selfish, the fleshbound. She is all that is opposite to struggle and transcendence. On the one hand, she hasn’t a clue why a man endures, indeed embraces, hell to reach some unknown heaven. On the other hand, she will do what she can to stop him from getting there, to keep him in the realm o f the sensuous, the perishable. She signifies mortality.

Whatever else it does, The Last Temptation o f Christ is perhaps most interesting for the image o f masculinity it reveals and advocates.It is an image shared and shaped by the film’s director, Martin Scorsese, one o f its writers, Paul Schrader, and Nikos Kazantzakis, whose book inspired the film. These men’s ideas o f what it is and what it takes to be a man are inextricable from their conception o f what is needed to reach God. Their model o f masculinity is embedded in a strong cultural and socio-political edifice. Yet it is always threatening to dissolve, as transparent and fragile as a bubble liable to burst at a touch. It is a dualist model in which fear o f women and desire for male purging and purification are fundamental. Though the model is Christian in its origins, comparisons can be made with otherwise alien traditions o f beliefs and practices. A thorough anthropological excur­sion would reveal related preoccupations in a variety o f cultures, but perhaps the most illuminating example comes from Melanesia. On the island o f Wogeo, as the story is told in Ian Hogbin’s The Island o f Menstruating M en f all males, when they attain maturity, regain their ‘purity’ by the practice o f inducing artificial ‘menstruation’. Using the claw o f a crayfish or crab, a man will induce an erection by thinking about a desirable woman or by masturbation and then gash his penis to induce profuse bleeding. In many parts o f Melanesia, men are thought to have cultural power while women have a more basic, potent and polluting biological capacity. Male bloodletting might be thought o f as an expression o f menstrual envy, an appropriation, by harsh and dangerous means, o f a female function.4

MARTIN SCORSESE is convinced that there is a desire for blood sacrifice, which is primal and universal (though the anthropological evidence for

3 0 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

rothersHE F E M I N I N E I N S C O R S E S E A N D S C H R A D E R

this is more ambiguous than he allows). Blood is the life force, the essence.5 In civilized religion this sacrifice is represented in the com­munion. In his own films, culminating in Taxi Driver, he has dealt more with less ‘civilized’, literal blood sacrifice.

Pauline Kael called her review of R aging Bull (written by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, who also wrote Mean Streets with Scorsese) “Religious Pulp, or The Incredible Hulk”.6 She complains that Scorsese, a great director when he does not try so hard, has got “movie making and the Church mixed up together; he’s trying to be the saint o f the cinema”. 7 Scorsese’s Jake La Motta’s life, she notes, was a ritual o f suffering. He is continually washed in his own blood. Scorsese, a master o f movement and energy in cinema, does not care about the fights - it is the punishment, given and received, with which he is obsessed. Scorsese, she suggests, does not want us to like Jake. He wants us to respond, on a higher level, to his energy and pain. “He wants a disreputable lowlife protagonist; then he suggests that this man is close to God, because he is God’s animal.” The film’s brutality, Kael concludes, is mystical, it’s “the kind o f movie that many men must fantasize about: their macho worst-dream movie”.8

Looking back to R aging Bull after making The Last Temptation, Scorsese says he got to understand more about himself while making that film, the correlation o f suffering and life, religion and a whole number of things. It was a matter o f guilt, o f how much punishment you would take,“which goes directly into the suffering of Jesus ... that’s what I always thought”.9 At the end of R aging Bull, it is as though Jake La Motta(Robert De Niro) is imprisoned, physically, in an excess o f flesh which he cannot transcend. There is a lot o f it and Schrader, Martin and Scorsese do not give him his own voice. In typically cine-literate flourish, he speaks Marlon Brando’s lines from On Thewaterfront. The fleshbound, lowlife boxer/petty entrepreneur has become abstraction, he has been labelled with spirituality. He is the civilized artist’s representation of sacrifice.

Robin Wood speaks about the “homosexual subtext” in Raging Bull. But there is something a litde poignant about his desire to appropriate the film as a progressive, critical text.10 The proposition of men loving men, this time in a literal brotherhood, is in fact right on

the crackling surface o f the film. It is a love which must be spoken in expressions like, “You Dumb Fuck”. By The Last Temptation this love can be spoken more clearly.11 In R aging Bull, Jake’s wife, with her Lana-Turnerized sexuality, is provocation, a source o f jealousy and rage. She causes him to have an erection during a period of abstinence before a fight. He struggles and comically beats it. For Scorsese, mortification of the flesh is important. Discipline, associated with mortification, is important.12 And well before The Last Temptation these are associated with women. Mary Magdalene is everywhere. “You never had the courage to be a man”, she tells Jesus in the brothel in The Last Temptation when he will not succumb to his feelings for her, to their mutual attraction. She just does not understand. The brothel here is a kind o f grim metaphor. It is the place where men who would be Gods spend time - so they can suffer.13

L et US NOW go from the brothel with the beautiful harlot to the metaphorical garbage heap, the ‘open sewer’ which is New York in Taxi Driver. Scorsese, as mentioned above, spoke o f primal feelings concerning bloodletting and sacrifice being still present today. There was a lot o f that, he said, in Taxi Driver. For Travis Bickle, the film’s

disturbed protagonist, to be righteous and correct, the only answer was to be the wrath of God - the Old Testament God. Harlan Jacobson noted that be­tween them Schrader and Scorsese “have defined the nut as the last man left with a vision”. (He suggests too that Christ, in The Last Temptation, “is shaken from the same tree as all o f Scorsese’s previ­ous nuts”14.) Throughout Taxi Driver, we are invited to share Travis Bickle’s alienation and moral disgust which builds to a climax and explodes in a

purifying violence. Travis, says Paul Schrader, seeks escape, to shake off his mortal chains and die a glorious death. The elevation, the redemp­tion, the transcendence he is seeking is, according to Schrader, that of an adolescent - he’s simply striking out. Travis, Schrader told Pauline Kael, was him without any brains.15 We should take what Schrader says seriously. He is one o f those artists whose work, you feel, reveals so much about himself. Yet he clearly articulates what you think you have traced, what you have uncovered. Again, his predicament is on the surface, in the contradictory, dual texture of his work.

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST IS PERHAPS

MOST INTERESTING FOR THE IMAGE OF MASCULINITY

IT REVEALS AND ADVOCATES... (THIS) MODEL OF

MASCULINITY IS EMBEDDED IN A STRONG CULTURAL

AND SOCIO-POLITICAL EDIFICE. YET IT IS ALWAYS

THREATENING TO DISSOLVE, AS TRANSPARENT AND

FRAGILE AS A BUBBLE LIABLE TO BURST AT A TOUCH.

IT IS A DUALIST MODEL IN WHICH FEAR OF WOMEN

AND DESIRE FOR MALE PURGING AND PURIFICATION

ARE FUNDAMENTAL.

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 31

In a 1976 interview with Schrader, Rick Thompson suggested that the asceticism o f Taxi Driver was so strong that even Scorsese’s busy style did not overcome it. That asceticism, says Schrader, was essen- tidly in the script:

What I think happened was that I wrote an essentially Protestant script, cold and isolated, and Marty directed a very Catholic film. My character wandered in from the snowy wastelands o f Michigan to the fetid, overheated atmosphere o f Marty’s New York ... Protestantism has a more individualistic, solipsistic righteous quality. The Catholic thing is more an emotional, communal flurry. When you walk into a Protestant church, you feel as if you’ve walked into a tomb; in a Catholic church, people are talking, there are priests, candles, a whole different atmosphere. Travis’ personality is built as if it were a Protestant church, but everything around him is acting differently. Both Marty and I have very strong religious back­grounds, so I don’t think that’s an incorrect interpretation.16

Scorsese had wanted to become a priest but also, from early days, loved the cinema. Schrader graduated from Calvin College. His adolescent consciousness, he told Thompson, was defined by the church and family structure. Movies, forbidden when he was younger, v ere an adult aberration. He grew up, he said, facing questions like

“what if you die tomorrow ...?” He was always thinking o f spiritual questions, even in his private thoughts, “rather than thinking about getting laid or becoming a football star”.17

After a period o f manic depression and alcoholic dissolution which led to hospitalization, the metaphor for Taxi Driver came to him. Travis Bickle was the:

absolute symbol o f urban loneliness. That’s the thing I ’d been living; that was my symbol, my metaphor. The film is about a car as the symbol of urban loneliness, a metal coffin.18

In real life as well as in his films, Schrader says he is concerned with redemption. He believes in purging, in a kind o f transcendence through contemplation or action. Taxi Driver, he has said, takes the European existential hero and puts him in an American context. He lashes outwards. While Schrader shares Travis’s “real need to triumph over the system”, he sees himself as giving and working pretty much

8 2 C I N E M A P

the way he wants, getting paid for it, getting respect, having “beaten the system”. If, however, he were “everybody’s pawn, if I was Travis Bickle, the triumph would have to take another course, probably a violent one”.19

As it was, Schrader says he was obsessed with guns for self­destructive reasons:

An interesting thing about guns, which my shrink pointed out to me and which pertains to Taxi Driver, is that all my suicidal fantasies are exactly the same: they all involve shooting myself in the head. I never fantasize about jumping off a building, or taking pills, or using a knife. The shrink pointed out that I believe all the demons are in my head; the fantasy is to get them out o f there. I have those evil, bad thoughts in there - it’s my Calvinist background. So when I have fantasies, they’re all about my blowing those evil thoughts out o f my head, and then I’ll be all right. So it isn’t even like dying: it’s getting that shit out o f my head.20

Toward die end o f the interview he tells o f the ‘great fantasies’ he had and still maintains about converting the world. When his devout father bemoans his fate, Schrader tells him that he did become an evangelist, just one o f a different sort.

By pointing to the articulation of Schrader’s concerns, I do not want to lose the feel, the experience o f the film Taxi Driver. Here, I think, Schrader and Scorsese create some kind o f religious argument about transcendence while conjuring up a very concrete, hyper­physical world. They are rather like the Jesuit priests in James Joyce’s Portrait o f the Artist as a Young Man. They evoke hell for their young male audience precisely by enumerating and magnifying their desires, terrifying them with the promise o f eternal punishment involving the very substances of their fleshly longings. The effect o f Taxi Driver, like that o f a retreat, builds up as it progressively presents further layers of the “open sewer”, “full o f filth and scum” that Travis inhabits. Sometimes, he tells the presidential candidate, when he travels in his cab, he can hardly take it. He can smell it, he gets headaches it’s so bad. We too feel Travis’s lonely New York hell. It is fetid, sticky; black youths throw raw eggs over the windscreen of his cab, the slim envelope o f protection from the filth. And we know there is no real protection. Travis’s cab, his mind, is penetrated, invaded by the filth. People fuck in the back seat; each time he returns the cab to the garage, he says, he has to clean the come off the back seat, some nights he cleans off the blood.

Travis, himself, says Schrader in his script:

has the smell o f sex about him: sick sex, repressed sex, lonely sex, but sex nonetheless. He is a raw male force, driving forward toward what, one cannot tell ...21

While Travis moves towards a redemptive violence, he listens im­passively to threats a psychotic passenger (played by Scorsese) makes about his wife as he watches her in an apartment he says she shares with a Unigger”- He will kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. The passenger - “You must think I ’m real sick, huh? A real pervert.” - a symptom of the city, responds to his wife’s betrayal and miscegenation with the threat o f blowing away her “pussy”, her defiling, offending part. Travis’s vision is broader. “Someday the rain’ll come and wash all the scum off the streets”, he says early in his diary. He would rid the city o f all pollution.

He begins his transfiguration. He gets in shape. The city has ruined his body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. His television transmits lies, more pollution. The candidate, Palantine, says the

A P E R S 7 5

people are beginning to rule. We, the people, know the right road, says the voice of hollow, amoral populism. Travis destroys his television. The honorably discharged marine becomes God’s warrior.

Here’s a man who would not take it anymore ... a man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit - here is someone who stood up. [Travis voice-over]

Travis’s first victim is a black supermarket thief whom he shoots.While we know Travis is mad, we are reminded he is a point of

righteous “sanity” in a world without judge­ment when, in one of the film’s most violent moments, the supermarket owner extracts revenge upon this thief and all others by cold-bloodedly bashing the immobilized youth with an iron bar.

De Niro’s tender, fragile Travis, with his edge of neurotic desperation, becomes a jerky, robot warrior as he kills those who do not deserve to live. The offenders are slaugh­tered and he is bathed in blood which drips from his hand as he puts his gun to his head in a suicidal gesture when the police arrive.Blood covers the brothel stairs, the walls; Travis has fulfilled his destiny. Earlier, he told Iris (Jodie Foster), the teenage prostitute, that there had never been any choice for him. Earlier still, when he had tried to speak his turmoil and loneliness to fellow cab driver “Wizard”(Peter Boyle), he was told to go out and get drunk, to get laid, “you got no choice anyway, we’re all fucked.”

FACING PAGE: POOL HALL SCENE WITH CHARLIE

(HARVEY KEITEL) AND TWO OTHERS, IN MARTIN SCORSESE'S

MEAN STREETS. THIS PAGE: TOP: JESUS (WILLEM DAFOE) AND FOLLOWERS

IN SCORSESE'S THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. BELOW: TRAVIS

(ROBERT DE NIRO) AND BETSY (CYBIL SHEPHERD) IN

SCORSESE'S TAXI DRIVER.

But Travis’s lonely pre-destined Protestant had tried to “become a person” and make human contact; he didn’t believe in “morbid self­attention”, as he says in his diary. He tells Iris that what she is doing is nothing for a person to do. She is part o f the filth and must be saved from it.22

And it is with another female, a woman his own age, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), that he tries to make contact. She was wearing a white dress, he says, and we see, “she appeared like an angel out o f this filthy mess. She’s alone, they ... cannot ... touch ... her ...” As Schrader admits, De Niro makes Travis; he brings a character together from his and Scorsese’s related but disparate visions. We believe and empathize with him in his cries for contact. But Betsy is a cool beauty in a hot body. In Travis’s first vision, her loose white dress moves softly, in slow motion. When she goes on their date, as we see her new white outfit, bordered in black, unbuttoned low at the neck and clinging across her body, we can understand why Travis, in his anomic and inept divine foolishness, spoils everything by taking her to “adult” movies. Betsy, like the candidate she works for, is spiritually bland. Insulted by his gesture, she rebuffs him, refusing all contact. In the end, Travis realizes how much she is “like the others ... cold and distant. And many people are like that - women for sure.”23

SCHRADER'S VISION OF LOS ANGELES in American Gigolo is also “excremental”.24 It is marked by a profound dualism. Here the centre of moral value and eventually o f spirituality is Julian(Richard Gere), a male prostitute who gives pleasure to older women neglected by their husbands. Unlike those who surround him, Julian knows he is hustling, selling himself for fine clothes, a fine apartment, the appear­ance of class. In a loveless environment, he gives a facsimile of love. The film’s strongest censure is reserved for Leon, a black gay pimp who dwells in the neon underworld, tries to get Julian to “do kink” (which Julian refuses) and sleeps with young, pale, blond boys. Leon gets what is coming to him. Julian also gets what he deserves: he is redeemed by love, love which has nothing to do with sex, love expressed through the barrier of prison walls - truly spiritual love. 25

American Gigolo, if appealing, does not come close to the vibrancy of a Scorsese film. It is more purely a Protestant story with its sensuous

charge coming primarily from its music, its photographed beautiful objects, cars, clothes, furnishings,- and Julian in his “unwired” beauty. Mich­elle, with whom Julian finally auains spiritual contact, is played by Lauren Hutton. Hutton used to be the Revlon Ultima II girl - she signifies the cosmetic world. She is now ag­ing, she would soon be like the other neglected, middle-aged matrons if Julian did not save her.

Neil Sinyard has suggested that Schrader’s success is attributable “to the creative use o f his critical fac­ulty and a commercial deployment of his Calvinism”.26 When Schrader suggested that Taxi Driver was a rich piece of juvenilia with “no maturity except at the talent level”, he compared it to a rough, first adolescent work of Dostoevsky, A Raw Youth.27 Sinyard suggested Schrader might be called a “Junk food” Dostoevsky:

SCHRADER SAYS HE IS CONCERNED WITH REDEMPTION. HE BELIEVES IN PURGING, IN A KIND

OF TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH CONTEMPLATION

OR ACTION. TAXI DRIVER, HE HAS SAID, TAKES THE

EUROPEAN EXISTENTIAL HERO AND PUTS HIM IN AN AMERICAN CONTEXT... WHILE SCHRADER

SHARES TRAVIS'S "REAL NEED TO TRIUMPH OVER

THE SYSTEM", HE SEES HIMSELF AS WORKING PRETTY MUCH THE WAY HE WANTS, GETTING PAID

FOR IT, [AND] GETTING RESPECT...

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 3 3

Like Dostoevsky, he is violent, melodramatic, relig­ious and profoundly conservative. Like the Russian master also, he uses the tawdry formulae o f crime fiction to erect massive psychological dramas about self-tormented people who struggle furiously be­tween heaven and hell, and who find redemption through suffering and sacrifice.28

Kazantzakis “a superman who had conquered matter”.33 While the conflict between flesh and spirit might last until death, through struggle, men might meet God, “the summit o f immateriality”.34 Christ says Kazantzakis, invites us to take his ascent, “following in his bloody tracks”.35

I f we are able to follow him we must have a profound knowledge o f his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares o f the earth, his sacrifice o f the great and small joys o f men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom’s summit, the Cross.36

Christ, says Kazantzakis, conquered “the invincible enchantment of simple human pleasures” .3/ Women, of course, are a part o f the “blossoming snares of the earth”. Translator P. A. Bien notes that during a period of ascetic fervour - as part o f Kazantzakis’s untiring search for “his true father, his true saviour” - he stayed in an ancient Macedonian monastery where not only human females but even cows and hens were excluded.38

As Scorsese remarked - and his film is true to the idea - Christ’s last temptation was not power or sexuality, but the temptation to give into the human side of his nature and five like us (“us”, in this instance, being patriarchal males, fathers of families). A man who would be a God is not only threatened by the sticky sexuality o f women, the involuntary excitement caused by women, a visceral response within himself which he cannot master. Woman - like the sea, fire and the odours o f the world - is a constant reminder o f human fragility, perishability, decay and death. Domesticity, the passing sensuous and emotional enjoyment of children offering “recompense” and “hope” in the face o f human finitude, is also a temptation to the warrior ascetic who would be God. In Scorsese’s film, Christ asks his mother Mary “Who are you? ” He has no mother, no family, only a father in Heaven. Belief in a heavenly, super-cultural Father can help us distance ourselves from the knowledge that we are fleshly, finite beings, born, in blood and pain, o f other fleshly beings - women. Women remind us that we are human. Scorsese and his brother artists and intellectuals

If Schrader has the taint of the market-place about him, Nikos Kazantzakis certainly does not.Kazantzakis, we know, was a spiritual man, quoted by statesmen, emulated by modern young men in their quest for a new spiritual life. For Kazantzakis- indebted to Christ, Buddha, Marx and Nietzsche- Christ was the supreme model of the man who struggles.

Scorsese strongly acknowledges his debt to Kazantzakis, for his “neurotic” and “psychotic”Jesus, a Jesus who was more “shocking” but more “accessible” than others, whose human nature did not frilly understand the divine role it had to play.29 Kazantzakis desired freedom and sanctity. The hero and the saint were mankind’s supreme model.His own writings, he has said, were only a means to aid his struggle - for deliverance. He invoked “great figures who had successfully undergone the most elevated and difficult of all evils”, wanting “to gain courage by seeing the human soul’s ability to triumph over everything”.30 The inscription on Kazantzakis’s grave reads: “I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything. I am free.”31 Interestingly, Schrader quoted from Kazantzakis something he had appended to the outline o f The Last Temptation ofChristto remind evervbody what the film was about: “It is not God who will save us. It is we who will save God by battling, by creating and transmuting matter into spirit.”

Kazantzakis, says Schrader, sees God as an extension of human experience. There is more to it than this. Schrader notes a kind of “pseudo superman kind of thinking” in what Kazantzakis says. It is we who in struggle will transmute matter into spirit and bring God down from heaven. Says Schrader neatly: “That’s Kazantzakis - it’s also ... heresy.” Again, he quotes the writer:

This book was w ritten because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered.32

There is something very familiar about the notion of the great figure who is arrogant in the face o f the realities o f pain and death, proud and joyful, not because of the pleasures of everyday life, but because o f his own elevation. The great figure is an ascetic warrior male. If the Nietzsch- ean superman was one crucial model for Kazantzakis (who, his English translator suggests, adopted a series of “saviours” throughout his life quest), Buddha, like Christ, was for

INTERESTINGLY,

SCHRADER QUOTED

FROM KAZANTZAKIS

SOMETHING HE HAD AP­

PENDED TO THE OUTLINE

OF THE LAST TEMPTA­

TION OF CHRIST ... "IT IS

NOT GOD WHO WILL

SAVE US. IT IS WE WHO

WILL SAVE GOD BY

BATTLING, BY CREATING

AND TRANSMUTING

MATTER INTO SPIRIT."

IMAGES OF WOMEN: FACING PAGE: VICKIE

LA MOTTA (CATHY MORIARTY) IN SCORSESE'S RAGIN G BU LL

THIS PAGE. TOP: MARY MAGDALENE (BARBARA HERSHEY) IN THE LAST

TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. BELOW: IRIS (JODIE FOSTER)

IN TAXI DRIVER.

are concerned with the imma­terial, spiritual father/creator with whom men might be re­united if they suffer enough. The ambiguous power of the excluded female is wholly ap­propriated.

Richard Corliss, admiring o f Scorsese’s “ballsy” adapta­tion of The Last Temptation, suggests that Scorsese knew that Kazantzakis’s story could be the ultimate buddy movie. For 15 years he had been di­recting secular drafts o f it. It is during Jesus’ period of delu- sion/dream - brought down from his destiny on the cross by the angel/temptress - that he hangs around with women and children. When Mary Magdalene dies, she tells him

that “there is only one woman in the world, one woman with many faces. This one falls, the next one rises.” He joins Mary of Bethany and her sister Martha, having children with Mary and being given leave by the angel/temptress to join the sister in her room and make love to her: “There’s only one woman in the world, go inside.”39 In this period of soft, gushy remission from his vocation, Jesus is swamped in femaleness - he grows old in it. He is ready to die. But at last his buddies come to save him - and us - for the masculine, for greater, higher things. Peter comes in and pushes aside the child/nymphet. Climatically, Judas arrives.40 In the Kazantzakis/Scorsese scenario, Judas was a loyal, loving man ordered by Jesus to betray him. Now he is angry. Jesus was the traitor. His place was on the cross. What business did he have with these women and children? You broke my heart... We held the world in our hands ... You took me in your arms and you begged me ‘Betray me’ ... I loved you so much.”

Here is love. Earlier in the film, Jesus and Judas sleep sweetly, calmly together. Christ kisses John the Baptist, for a long time, on the lips. Here is love again. True warmth and affection is something shared by men. And it depends on the exclusion o f women.

Scorsese says he wanted to make The Last Temptation to “get to know Jesus better” . While he did not intend, in the film, primarily to

be a bringer of the Word, he has always taken the idea o f love very seriously, the idea of creating “a kind o f conglomerate of love”.41 He was trying to understand loving and forgiveness. To apply this in his own life was very hard and he thought that, doing The Last Temptation, he could explore this problem through Judas’ eyes with his inability to “turn the other cheek”:

.. he’s speaking for a lot of us ... We want to do it but it’s very hard to do and we know that basically in order to live together in this world we’re going to have to learn how to do th at... And so I think to that extent I ’ve started to maybe scratch a little of the surface of it. I don’t purport to be able to do it myself, but ... I ’m beginning to understand a little more how one should live.42

Yet in The Last Temptation Schrader’s and Scorsese’s conglomer­ate of love” is cold. In earlier Scorsese films, we could feel the exhilaration of the love/hate relationships. Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that the Kazantzakis/Scorsese depiction of Jesus, wrestling with the human side of his nature as he comes to terms with the God within Him:

leaves little room for any developed sense of community, and just as little space for love as anything more than an abstraction.43

I DID NOT MENTION EARLIER that Pauline Kael’s complaint that Rapfinp Bull mixed up the Church and movie-making came after that mixture had, for her, gone sour. In her review of Mean Streets, she says:

In Scorsese’s vision, music and the movies work within us and set the terms in which we perceive ourselves. Music and the movies and the Church. A witches’ brew.44

Her celebration of Mean Streets captures what is great in Scorsese. The film “has its own unsettling, episodic rhythm and a high-charged emotional range that is dizzyingly sensual” .45 Near the beginning of the film when Charlie (Harvey Keitel) goes into the bar, “the camera glides along with him as he’s drawn toward the topless dancers on the barroom stage.” We the audience, says Kael, share his trance. We become participants and it is in a cinema which is refreshingly nervous, impure, dirty and alive - a bit like life. Here we become intoxicated. Cinematography, music and performance all activate Mean Streets'.

It’s as if these characters were just naturally part o f an opera with pop themes. The music is the electricity in the air o f this movie: the music is like an engine that the characters move to. Johnny Boy, the most susceptible, half dances through the movie ... 46

Kael, in her own small masterpiece bouncing off from Scorsese’s, manages to touch on the abandon, the delirium with which De Niro’s Johnny Boy charges the screen. The “intensely appealing De Niro, here a “beautiful nut”47, doesn’t just act, says Kael, “he takes off into the vapors”.48

David Denby also enthused about Scorsese’s “violent sincerity”, his unpatronizing depiction o f his characters, life of “crazy restless­ness” . Denby saw Charlie’s and Johnny Boy’s “edgy, murderously unstable love for each other” holding the film in tension.49 The male characters’ energy had no goal or purpose - it was just there, present, like the hypnotic irresistible city to whose “rottenness” we are drawn. Denby speaks about the allowance o f space to the Mean Streets characters, the connection between techniques of improvisation and the extension o f their expressiveness. The mood of dialogue, he notes, is “almost ecstatically high pitched”.50 Yet he suggests that while

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 3 5

DE NIRO IN SCORSESE'S RAGING BULL

Scorsese uses improvisation to make his people sound as free as possible, he’s in trouble when he has an actor who can’t pull it off. Amy Robinson, he says, has an impossible role to begin with. She is Charlie’s “adoring epileptic” girl friend Theresa. Her anxiety and self-con­sciousness in the semi-improvised scenes, he suggests, makes her character seem unnecessarily pathetic - “not even on the same existen­tial plane as the ecstatic male talkers”} 1

Denby could be speaking o f the place of women in Scorsese films generally. They do not share in the networks of ambivalent and ambiguous emotional affinity. They do not figure in a way we might care for them. Dramatic interest is not bestowed upon them. The films and their fabulous energy belong to the men. By the time of the more static The Last Temptation o f Christ, with its heavenly promise, the sweet and lively hell o f Mean Streets, with its visceral and immanent ecstasy, is almost lost. I don’t think that Denby or Kael saw the threat that was there even in Mean Streets, the possibility that all that energy might in the end be put a t the service o f asceticism. Kael saw Charlie torment himself “like a fanatic seminarian.”52 She also suggested Mean Streets had “a thicker textured rot and violence than we have ever had in an American movie, and a riper sense of evil.53 But she thought that the film was a “blood thriller in the truest sense”, referring to the capacity o f film to link itself to “common life”, to go “below the polite level” which Graham Greene (and Grierson and Tynan) spoke about. Scorsese, however, was concerned with BLOOD, blood sacrifice, blood which signified things above this world. Theresa tells Charlie he should help himself first when he is burdened with her cousin Johnny Boy’s divine and self-destructive foolishness and wants to help him. St Francis of Assissi had it all down, he knew, Charlie tells her. “What’re you talking about?” she asks uncomprehendingly, womanly. “St Francis didn’t run numbers.” And while Charlie can make love to her, can even care, he cannot commit himself to her. He dreams one night he is about to make love to her. He is just about to come. He comes blood. The Heaven/Hell bent hero dreams his masculinity - and there is no space in the dream, in the quest, for intercourse with women.

NOTES1. From the introduction to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation o f Christ. Reproduced here as in Nikos Kazantzakis, Prologue to The Last Temptation,Faber and Faber. London, 1988. p.7. Translation by P. A. Bien.2. Quoted in Nikos Kazantzakis. SBS documentary directed and produced by Kostas Assimacopouios, 14 November 1988.3. See The Island o f Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea, Chandler Publishing Company, Scranton, 1970.4. See also Gilbert H. Herdt’s Rituals o f Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea, University o f California Press, Berkeley, 1982; Michael Allen’s Male Cults and Secret Initiations in Melanesia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967; and Bruno Bettelheim’s Symbolic Wounds, Puberty Rites, and the Envious Male, Collier Books, New York, 1955.5. See interview with Richard Corliss, “Body ... And Blood”, Film Comment, Vol.24, No.3, September/October, 1988, p.42.6. Taking I t A ll In, Marion Boyars, London,1986.7. ibid., p.110.8. ibid., p.lll.9. SBS Interviews with Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader in The South Bank Show, produced and directed by Nigel Wattis. SBS, 14 November 1988.10. See “The Homosexual Subtext: Raging B ulT , The Australian Journal o f Screen Theory, 15/16,1982. The title o f his piece, Wood tells us, comes from Scorsese himself: “ ...he told me ... that though he was not aware o f it while making the film, he now saw that Raging Bull has a homosexual subtext”(p.59). Wood sees the film as “among the major documents o f our age: a work single-mindedly concerned with chronicling the disastrous consequences, for men and women alike, o f the repression o f constitutional bisexuality within our culture” (p.66). Wood also, I think rightly, speaks o f the film’s “relentless and near-hysterical intensity”(p.59).

1 1 .1 Cannot deal with The Color o f Money here but I recommend Jimmy McDonough’s review, “Raging Balls”, in Film Comment, Vol.23. N o.3, May/June 1987. He suggests: “Fast Eddie is the most spectacular closet case Scorsese has created to date. Check out his scenes with Vincent, then look at the ones with Janelle; Eddie gets his pool cue up for the kid, but he doesn’t have the balls for his old lady. The heart o f Money is a tortured, tentative love story: iceman Eddie and young stud V incent... The sexual undercurrent o f Money is truly uncomfortable. It is a world where the men would definitely rather be with the boys - this is male bonding gone berserk.” Eddie’s and Vincent’s women, McDonough notes, “stand off to the side like props” ( p.74).12. See interview with Corliss, op. cit., p.38.13. See Michael Henry’s interview with Scorsese in Positif N o.332, October 1988. Here he talks about Kazantzakis, the representation o f women and carnal pleasure, and his own and Paul Schrader’s inability to free themselves from associating sexuality with “quelque chose de reptilien, de honteux, d’ignoble” (“something reptilian, shameful, ignoble”) (p .l 1). In The Last Temptation, the tattooed Mary Magdalene is linked with reptiles and, during Jesus’ temptations in the desert, the serpent speaks with her voice, but Scorsese says that reptiles do not represent woman, they represent carnal pleasure.14. See “You Talkin’ to Me?”, Film Comment, V ol.24, N o.3.September/October 1988, pp.32, 33.15. See Richard Thompson’s “Screenwriter. Taxi Driver’s Paul Schrader”, interview with Paul Schrader, Film Comment, Vol.12, N o.2 , March-April 1976.16. ibid., p.13.17. ibid., p . l l .18. ibid., p.9.19. ibid., p.14. Schrader does not only relate closely to Travis Bickle. In an interview with David Thomson, he says o f the John Heard character in Cat People: “I recognized that what I had here was an intellectual, older Travis Bickle. This is me and this is my Calvinistic notion o f the postponement o f pleasure and the kind o f sanctity o f sex where you can really only be in love with something better.” See “ Cats. Paul Schrader interviewed by David Thomson”, Film Comment, Vol.18, N o.2, March-April 1982, p.51.20. Interview with Richard Thompson, op. cit. p.19.21. ibid., p.12.22 . Travis wanted to know Iris’s name. Just as “innocently”, he had wanted to know the name o f the woman serving candy at the porno movies where he goes on his own. This woman, taking his persistent request as harassment, calls the manager. Much o f the character for Iris, Schrader tells Thompson, was rewritten from an underaged, “junkie” prostitute, with “a concentration span o f about 20 seconds” whom he had picked up when he was feeling “particularly blue” in a bar in New York (ibid., p.13).23. Michaei Dempsey suggests that Scorsese and Schrader abandon too easily the possibility o f a relationship between Travis and Betsy or any other woman. “For reasons that may be as much intellectual and emotional as commercial, they prefer the certainty o f blood to the chance o f love.” See his review o f Taxi Driver in Film Quarterly, V ol.29, No.4, Summer, 1976. Robin Wood sees Betsy, Travis’s “angel”, as “an ideological construct, a figure o f almost total vacuity whose only discernible character trait is opportunism”. (Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988. p. 52). In Taxi Driver's cynical coda (a prelude to The King o f Comedy}, Travis’s fame as a media hero impresses Betsy. She is now interested in him. The interest is not reciprocated.24. See Neil Sinyard’s “Guilty Pleasures: The Films o f Paul Schrader” , Cinema Papers, N o.41, December 1982. p.511.25. The coda in American Gigolo is a direct tribute to Bresson’s Pickpocket.26. op. cit., p.510.27. Interview with Thompson, op. cit.. p.9.28. Sinyard speaks o f Schrader’s edge o f prurience and repression. I think that Scorsese shares this in relation to gays, blacks and women. It is at the level o f the film, rather than o f particular characters, that this is expressed.29. SBS Interview.30. Nikos Kazantzakis, quoted in SBS documentary.31. ibid.32. Quoted in SBS interview by Schrader, slightly different word order here as in Prologue to The Last Temptation, p.9.33. See Translator’s Note, p .511, in edition cited in Note 1.34. Kazantzakis, Prologue, p.8.35. ibid., p.8.36. ibid., p.8.37. ibid., p.9.38. op. cit., p.510.39. In the /Wti/interview, Scorsese says he does not know if Kazantzakis shared this point o f view or whether he wanted to put us on guard against the ruses o f Satan (op. cit., p . 11).40. Ian Penman suggests that the disciples “come over like a debating society Wild Bunch”. See “Good Morning Jerusalem”, The Face, October 1988, p.129.41. Interview with Corliss, op. cit. p.38.42. SBS Interview.43. Rosenbaum also argues that the “use o f females throughout The Last Temptation to signify only motherhood and temptation [o f the male] suggests that if anyone should be objecting to this film, it is women o f all denominations rather than fundamentalists o f both sexes.” See “Raging Messiah”, The Last Temptation o f Christ, Sight and Sound ,Vol.57, No.4. Autumn, 1988.44. See “Everyday Inferno”, in Reeling, Warner Books, New York, 1976.45. ibid., p.235.46. ibid., p.242.47. ibid., p.238.48. ibid., p.40.49 . See “Mean Street’s: The Sweetness o f Hell”, Sight and Sound ,Vol.43, N o .l, Winter 1973-4, p.48.50. ibid., p.50.51. ibid., p.50, my italics.52. op. cit., p.237. Charlie passes his fingers over the flames o f Church candles, he puts his finger to a burning match and, finally, appears to plunge his hand into the flame o f his uncle’s restaurant stove. Travis, in Taxi Driver, makes a fist over the flame o f his stove, readying himself for his vengeance.53. ibid., p.236.

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AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF

PRESSMAN, TAKEN BY THE STUDIO

PHOTOGRAPHER, HURREU.

I n t e r v i e w b y P a u l H a r r i s

EDWARD R. PRESSMAN IS HOLLYWOOD'S RESI-

DENT MAVERICK PRODUCER. WITH NEARLY 30 FEATURES UNDER HIS BELT IN

JUST 20 YEARS (INCLUDING BADLANDS, DESPAIR, PLENTY, GOOD MORN-

ING BABYLON AND WALL STREET), PRESSMAN POSSESSES AN UNUSUALLY

KEEN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS REQUIRED TO NAVIGATE THE MIDDLE

GROUND BETWEEN ART AND COMMERCE IN THE SO-CALLED NEW HOLLY-

WOOD. RECENTLY, PRESSMAN WAS IN AUSTRALIA AS A GUEST OF THE AUS-

TRALIAN FILM, TELEVISION AND RADIO SCHOOL.

qu estio n : You entered the film industry in the 1960s as the Hollywood studio system was in an advanced state of decay, with the traditional, power o f the producers and studio heads passing into the hands of independent producers. pressm an : At the high school I attended in New York there was a teacher of modern European history, Philip Perlstein, who used films in his classes. We were shown titles like The Blue Angel, Cabinet o f Dr. C aligan and Maedchen In Uniform.

A friend of mine, Johnny Olstreicher, indoctrinated me with the films of Ingmar Bergman and the French New Wave, a school of filmmaking I was very attracted to at the time.

When we started out as a filmmaker, my partner, Paul Williams, and I had become friends with Bert Schneider’s group at BBS Productions [Easy Rider,

N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 3 9

Five Easy Pieces] which was then making a major impact on the film community. We all subscribed to the theory that films could change the world and thus felt that we were in touch with the currents of the time. q u estio n : Your first feature film as a producer, Out O f I t (1969), details the high school culture clash between an intellectual type and a jock, the latter played by Jon Voight.

Why was the film’s release delayed?pressm an : The film was shot in 1967 and after completion was sold to United Artists (UA), run at that time by David Picker. Jon Voight had been cast in Midnight Cowboy, which United Artists felt may be a winner, so our film was put on hold until after Cowboy’s release. Maybe they felt that our film could hurt Cowboy but that Cowboy could help ours.

We then made an agreement with UA to make our second feature, The Revolutionary (1970), based on a novel by Hans Königsberger (A Walk With Love A nd Death), again with Jon Voight. Because it was a bigger investment on UA’s part, they decided it would be better to release The Revolutionary first, which they did. But by the time they got round to considering Out O f It, the film had dated and become a period piece, with the result that it went out on a double bill with The Christine Jorgensen Story.

After The Revolutionary, Paul was considered one o f the brightest, up-and-coming filmmakers and was even looked up to for a brief period by Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma as their mentor. Warner Brothers offered him any project o f his choosing and he elected to go with D ealing or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues(1972) , but this choice eventually undermined Paul. He was going through a lot o f changes and was always on the crest of the cultural force o f the moment. For example, after The Revolutionary was completed he visited Eldridge Cleaver in Morocco.

During D ealing he started to experiment with drugs. In casting sessions people would come in and show how much they knew of this culture and how well qualified they were to be in the film.

Paul had met a relatively unknown actor named Bichard Dreyfuss whom he thought would be good in a part, but he was bypassed in favour o f an actor who was a bigger name at the time, Robert F. Lyons ( Getting Straight). But he proved inadequate.

When we realized that a mistake had been made, we had the choice o f going to Warners and telling them that we had made a $150,000 error o f judgement, and risk losing the whole movie, or ploughing ahead with what we had. We chose the latter course, which proved to be a valuable lesson for the future.q u estio n : How did you become first acquainted with writer-director Terrence Malick?pressm an : Through Paul Williams, who had gone to Harvard with Terry and Jacob Brackman. He had been trying to set up Badlands(1973) for some years and had the full endorsement o f people like Arthur Penn.

After Badlands and Days O f Heaven (1978), Terry spent several years working on a biographical screenplay about Thomas Edison and another script about farmers in contemporary Texas which he deliv­ered to Paramount under a long-term legacy left by the former company president, the late Charlie Bludhorn. Terry had an aversion to the social context o f Hollywood and wanted no part of it. q u estio n : Three directors o f photography are credited on Badlands, but the film’s visual style is remarkably consistent. pressm an : The late Brian Probyn established the look of the lighting and the interiors but was taken ill, exhausted by the heat, the long hours and Terry’s idiosyncrasies. On several occasions I can recall Brian shooting with the slate upside down as a form of protest in a disagreement with Terry about methods o f orthodox coverage and matching shots. When Brian left, there was a big crisis on set and Tak Fujimoto, Brian’s assistant [later to be DOP on several Jonathan

uemme reatures mcmunig ivxeivm rxna JOLUwurn,, ovrnu-mng vv nu- <uiu M arried To The Mob, and John Hughes’ FerrisBueller’sDay Off], took over on the understanding that he would be working only on an interim capacity while we searched for a new DOP [Steven Larner]. Amazingly, despite the input of these different hands, the film looks remarkably seamless.q u estio n : With the diversity o f projects that you produce, how difficult is it to physically oversee them? Oliver Stone describes you in this respect as a “hands-off producer”.pressm an : Oliver, at this stage of his career, is at the peak of his game and is a totally responsible individual who keeps to the schedule and, in that sense, is a producer’s dream. He doesn’t waste time, is very efficient and there is no bullshit.

But going back to our first collaboration, The H and (1981), I was very much a hands-on producer. Our relationship has evolved in sub­sequent years to the point where now he is very experienced. It can be a problem overseeing films when you have more than one in product­ion at a given time. When this does occur it is due to factors beyond my control. Michael Flynn, who has been working with my company for six years, acts as a right hand. I also employ line producers and this helps ensure a continuity between projects.

I have reached a critical point in my career where I am faced with the decision as to whether I should expand or contract. I must admit that film producing is a very seductive activity in the sense that I can make films happen that I want to see made. q u estio n : Is there any method in which you assess properties? pressm an : It is not very systematic. Normally script departments seem

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B A C K I S S U E S : C I N E M A P A P E R S

NUMBER 1 (JANUARY 1974):David Williamson, Ray Harryhausen, Peter Weir, Antony Ginnane, Gillian Armstrong, Ken G. Hall, The Cars that A te Paris.

NUMBER 2 (APRIL 1974):Censorship, Frank Moorhouse, Nicolas Roeg, Sandy Harbutt, Film under Allende, Between The Wars, A lvin Purple

NUMBER 3 (JULY 1974):Richard Brennan, John Papadopolous, Willis O ’Brien, William Friedkin, The True Story O f Eskimo Nell.

NUMBER 10 (SEPT/OCT 1976)Nagisa Oshima, Philippe Mora, Krzysztof Zanussi, Marco Ferreri, Marco Belloochio, gay cinema.

NUMBER 11 (JANUARY 1977)Emile De Antonio, Jill Robb, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Roman Polanski, Saul Bass, The Picture Show Man.

NUMBER 12 (APRIL 1977)Ken Loach, Tom Haydon, Donald Sutherland, Bert Deling, Piero Tosi, John Dankworth, John Scott, Days O f Hope,The Getting O f Wisdom.

NUMBER 13 { JULY 1977)Louis Malle, Paul Cox, John Power, Jeanine Seawell, Peter Sykes, Bernardo Bertolucci, In Search O f Anna.

NUMBER 14 (OCTOBER 1977)Phil Noyce, Matt Carroll, Eric Rohmer, Terry Jackman, John Huston, Luke’s Kingdom, The Last Wave, Blue Fire Lady.

NUMBER 15 (JANUARY 1978)Tom Cowan, Francois Truffaut, John Faulkner, Stephen Wallace, the Taviani brothers, Sri Lankan cinema, T he Irishman, The Chant O f Jimmie Blacksmith.

NUMBER 16 ( APRIL-JUNE 1978)Gunnel Lindblom, John Duigan, Steven Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey, The Africa Project, Swedish cinema, Dawn!, Patrick.

NUMBER 17 (AUG/SEPT 1978)Bill Bain, Isabelle Huppert, Brian May, Polish cinema, Newsfront, The Night The Prowler.

NUMBER 18 (OCT/NOV 1978)John Lamond, Sonia Borg, Alain Tanner, Indian cinema, Dimboola, Cathy’s Child.

NUMBER 19 (JAN/FEB 1979)Antony Ginnane, Stanley Hawes, Jeremy Thomas, Andrew Sarris, sponsored documentaries, Blue Fin.

NUMBER 20 (MARCH-APRIL 1979)Ken Cameron, Claude Lelouch, Jim Sharman, French cinema, My Brilliant Career.

NUMBER 22 (JULY/AUG 1979)Bruce Petty, Luciana Arrighi, Albie Thoms, Stax, Alison’s Birthday

NUMBER 24 (DEC/JAN 1980)Brian Trenchard-Smith, Ian Holmes, Arthur Hiller, Jerzy Toeplitz, Brazilian cinema, Harlequin.

NUMBER 25 (FEB/MARCH 1980)David Puttnam, Janet Strickland, Everett de Roche, Peter Faiman, Chain Reaction, Stir.

NUMBER 26 (APRIL/MAY 1980)Charles H. Joffe, Jerome Heilman, Malcolm Smith, Australian nationalism, Japanese cinema, Peter Weir, Water Under The Bridge.

NUMBER 27 (JUNE-JULY 1980)Randal Kleiser, Peter Yeldham, Donald Richie, Richard Franklin’s obituary o f Alfred Hitchcock, the New Zealand film industry, G rendel Grendel Grendel.

NUMBER 28 (AUG/SEPT 1980)Bob Godfrey, Diane Kurys, Tim Burns,

John O ’Shea, Bruce Beresford, Bad Timing, Roadgames.

NUMBER 29 (OCT/NOV 1980)Bob Ellis, Uri Windt, Edward Woodward, Lino Brocka, Stephen Wallace, Philippine cinema, Cruising, The Last Outlaw.

NUMBER 36 (FEBRUARY 1982)Kevin Dobson, Brian Kearney, Sonia Hofmann, Michael Rubbo, Blow Out, Breaker Morant, Body Heat, The Man From Snowy River.

NUMBER 37 (APRIL 1982)Stephen MacLean, Jacki Weaver, Carlos Saura, Peter Ustinov, women in drama, Monkey Grip.

NUMBER 38 (JUNE 1982)Geoff Burrowes, George Miller, James Ivory, Phil Noyce, Joan Fontaine, Tony Williams, law and insurance, Far East.

NUMBER 39 (AUGUST 1982)Helen Morse, Richard Mason, Anja Breien, David Millikan, Derek Granger, Norwegian cinema, National Film Archive, We O f The Never Never.

NUMBER 40 (OCTOBER 1982)Henri Safran, Michael Ritchie, Pauline Kael, Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My Dinner With Andre, The Return O f Captain Invincible.

NUMBER 41 (DECEMBER 1982)Igor Auzins, Paul Schrader, Peter Tammer, Liliana Cavani, Colin Higgins, The Tear O f Living Dangerously.

NUMBER 42 (MARCH 1983)Mel Gibson, John Waters, Ian Pringle, Agnes Varda, copyright, Strikebound, The Man From Snowy River.

NUMBER 43 (MAY/JUNE 1983)Sydney Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme Clifford, The Dismissal, Careful He Might Hear Tou.

NUMBER 44-45 (APRIL 1984)David Stevens, Simon Wincer, Susan Lambert, a personal history o f Cinema Papers, Street Kids.

NUMBER 46 (JULY 1984)Paul Cox, Russell Mulcahy, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irons, Eureka Stockade, Waterfront, The Boy In The Bush,A Woman Suffers, Street Hero.

NUMBER 47 (AUGUST 1984)Richard Lowenstein, Wim Wenders, David Bradbury, Sophia Turkiewicz, Hugh Hudson, Robbery Under Arms.

NUMBER 48 (OCT/NOV 1984)Ken Cameron, Michael Pattinson, Jan Sardi, Yoram Gross, Bodyline, The Slim Dusty Movie.

NUMBER 49 (DECEMBER 1984)Alain Resnais, Brian McKenzie, Angela Punch McGregor, Ennio Morricone, Jane Campion, horror films, Niel Lynne.

NUMBER 50 (FEB/MARCH 1985)Stephen Wallace, Ian Pringle, Walerian Borowczyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Conti, Brian May, The Last Bastion, Bliss.

NUMBER 51 (MAY 1985)Lino Brocka, Harrison Ford, Noni Hazlehurst, Dusan Makavejev, Em oh Ruo, Winners, The Naked Country, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Robbery Under Arms.

NUMBER 52 (JULY 1985)John Schlesinger, Gillian Armstrong, Alan

Parker, soap operas, TV News, film advertising, Don’t Call Me Girlie, For Love Alone, Double Sculls.

NUMBER 53 (SEPTEMBER 1985)Bryan Brown, Nicolas Roeg, Vincent Ward, Hector Crawford, Emir Kusturica, New Zealand film and television, Return To Eden.

NUMBER 54 (NOVEMBER 1985)Graeme Clifford, Bob Weis, John Boorman, Menahem Golan, rock videos, Wills A nd Burke, The Great Bookie Robbery, The Lancaster Miller Affair.

NUMBER 55 (JANUARY 1986)James Stewart, Debbie Byrne, Brian Thompson, Paul Verhoeven, Derek Meddings, tie-in marketing, The Right- Hand Man, Birdsville.

NUMBER 56 (MARCH 1986)Fred Schepisi, Dermis O ’Rourke, Brian Trenchard-Smith, John Hargreaves, stunts, smoke machines,Dead-End Drive- In, The More Things Change, Kangaroo, Tracy.

NUMBER 58 (JULY 1986)Woody Allen, Reinhard Hauff, Orson Welles, the Cinémathèque Française, The Fringe Dwellers, Great Expectations: The Untold Story, The Last Frontier.

NUMBER 59 (SEPTEMBER 1986)Robert Altman, Paul Cox, Lino Brocka, Agnes Varda, The AFI Awards, The Movers.

NUMBER 60 (NOVEMBER 1986) Australian Television, Franco Zeffirelli, Nadia Tass, Bill Bennett, Dutch Cinema, Movies By Microchip, Otello.

NUMBER 61 (JANUARY 1987)Alex Cox, Roman Polanski, Philippe Mora, Martin Armiger, film in South Australia, Dogs In Space, Howling III.

NUMBER 62 (MARCH 1987)Screen Violence, David Lynch, Cary Grant, ASSA conference, production barometer, film finance, The Story O f The Kelly Gang.

NUMBER 63 (MAY 1987)Gillian Armstrong, Antony Ginnane, Chris Haywood, Elmore Leonard, Troy Kennedy Martin, The Sacrifice, Landslides, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Jilted.

NUMBER 64 (JULY 1987)Nostalgia, Dennis Hopper, Mel Gibson, Vladimir Osherov, Brian Trenchard- Smith, Chartbusters, Insatiable.

NUMBER 65 (SEPTEMBER 1987)Angela Carter, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Derek Jarman, Gerald L ’Ecuyer, Gustav Hasford, AFI Awards, Poor Man’s Orange.

NUMBER 66 (NOVEMBER 1987) Australian Screenwriters, Cinema and China, James Bond, James Clayden, Video, De Laurentiis, New World, The Navigator, Who’s That Girl.

NUMBER 67 (JANUARY 1988)John Duigan, George Miller, Jim Jarmusch, Soviet cinema- Part I, women in film, shooting in 70m m , filmmaking in Ghana, The Tear My Voice Broke,Send A Gorilla.

NUMBER 68 (MARCH 1988)Martha Ansara, Channel 4 , Soviet Cinema Part I I , Jim McBride, Glamour, nature

F I L M V I E W S

V IEW SW IMW E N D E R S

SOLVEIG DOMMART1N JEA N -PIERRE GORIN NZ FILM ARCHIVE WENDY THOMPSON ANTONIONI MICHAEL LEE

FILMVIEWS

NUMBER 123 AUTUMN 1985 The 1984 Women’s Film Unit, The Films of Solrun Hoaas, Louise Webb, Scott Hicks, Jan Roberts

NUMBER 124 WINTER 1985Films for Workers, Merata Mita, Len Lye,Marleen Gorris, Daniel Petrie,Larry Meltzer

NUMBER 125 SPRING 1985Rod Webb, Marleen Gorris, Ivan Gaal,Red Matildas, Sydney Film Festival

NUMBER 126 SUMMER 1985/86 The Victorian Women’s Film Unit, RandeUi’s, Laleen Jayamanne, Lounge Room Rock, The Story o f Oberhausen

NUMBER 127 AUTUMN 1986 AFTRS reviews, Jane Oehr,John Hughes, Melanie Read, Philip Brophy,Gyula Gazdag, Chile: Hasta Cuando?

NUMBER 128 WINTER 1986 Karin Altmann, Tom Cowan, Gillian Coote, Nick Torrens, David Bradbury, Margaret Haselgrove, Karl Steinberg, AFTRS graduate films, Super 8,Pop Movie

NUMBER 129 SPRING 1986 Reinhard HaufF, 1986 Sydney Film Festival, Nick Zedd, Tony Rayns, Australian Independent Film, Public Television in Australia, Super 8

NUMBER 130 SUMMER 1986/87 Sogo Ishii, Tom Haydon, Gillian Leahy, Tom Zubrycki, John Hanhardt, Australian Video Festival, Erika Addis, Ross Gibson, Super 8, Camera Natura

NUMBER 131 AUTUMN 1987 Richard Lowenstein, New Japanese Cinema, Ken Russell, Taking a Film Production Overseas, Richard Chataway and Michael Cusack

NUMBER 132 WINTER 1987 Censorship in Australia, Rosalind Krauss, Troy Kennedy Martin, New Zealand Cinema, David Chesworth,

NUMBER 133 SPRING 1987 Wim Wenders, Solveig Dommartin, The Films o f Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Michelangelo Antonioni, Wendy Thompson, Michael Lee, Jonathan Dennis, Super 8

NUMBER 134 SUMMER 1987/88 Recent Australian Films, Film Music, Groucho’s Cigar, Jerzy Domaradzki, Hong Kong Cinema, The Films o f Chris Marker, David Noakes, The Devil in the Flesh, How the West Was Lost

NUMBER 135 AUTUMN 1988 Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Ansara, New Chinese Cinema, Lindsay Anderson, Sequence Magazine, Cinema Italia, New Japanese Cinema, Fatal Attraction

NUMBER 136 WINTER 1988 Film Theory and Architecture, Victor Burgin, Horace Ove, Style Form and History in Australian Mini Series, Blue Velvet, South o f the Border, Cannibal Tours

NUMBER 137 SPRING 1988 Hanif Kureishi, Fascist Italy and American Cinema, Gillian Armstrong, Atom Egoyan, Film Theory and Architecture, Shame, Television Mini Series, Korean Cinema, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid ■

cinematography, Ghosts O f The Civil Dead, Feathers, Ocean, Ocean.

NUMBER 69 (MAY 1988)Special Cannes issue, film composers, sex, death and family films, Vincent Ward, Luigi Acquisto, David Parker, production barometer, Ian Bradley, Pleasure Domes.

NUMBER 70 (NOVEMBER 1988)Film Australia, Gillian Armstrong,Fred Schepisi, Wes Craven, John Waters, A1 Clark, Shame Screenplay Part I.

NUMBER 71 (JANUARY 1989)Yahoo Serious, Film Finance Corporation, David Cronenberg, Co-productions, The Year in Retrospect, Philip Brophy, Film Sound — the role o f the sound track,Toung Einstein, Shout, The Last Tempta­tion o f Christ, Salt Saliva Sperm and Sweat

NUMBER 72 (MARCH 1989)Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Australian Science Fiction movies, Survey: The 1988 Mini-Series, Stop Making Scents: Aromarama, Ann Turner’s Celia, Fellini’s La dolce vita, Women and Westerns

NUMBER 73 (MAY 1989)Special Cannes Issue, Phil Noyce, Franco Nero, Jane Campion, Ian Pringle, Frank Pierson, Australian films at Cannes, Production Barometer, Pay TV, Film Finance, Fanzines

NUMBER 74 (JULY 1989)Kylie Minogue’s first film The Delinquents, Australians in Hollywood, Chinese cinema, Philippe Mora, Yuri Sokol,Twins, True believers, Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead, Shame screenplay ■

O THE CINEMA PAPERS GUIDE TO NEW FILMS AND VIDEOS IN DISTRIBUTION

I H E CIN EM A PA PERS G U ID E to New Films and Videos * in Distribution is available three times a year. It covers

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area, to find out details about distributors and availability. The Guide covers 35mm and 16mm features, shorts, documentaries and home video releases, as well as educational, management training, health and safety and ‘how-to’ programs. Also listed are all new acquisitions available for free borrowing from Government film libraries.

Each entry includes: title, director, country of origin, year of completion, running time, censorship classification, format, synopsis and source. There is also a comprehensive listing of distributor’s addresses and telephone numbers.PRICE: The Guide is published three times a year. One year’s subscription costs $12.00

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C I N E M A S R E A D E R S H I P Q U E S T I O N N A I R E

QUESTION 7:

QUESTION 8 (a):

QUESTION 8 (b):

QUESTION 9:

QUESTION 10:

QUESTION 11:

QUESTION 12:

For each of the statements below, please say whether you strongly agree, partly agree, partly disagree or strongly disagree by circling the code which corresponds to your response?

STRONGLY PARTLY PARRY STRONGLYAGREE AGREE DISAGREE DISAGREE

A) THE FILM REVIEWS INCINEMA PAPERS ARE ELITIST AND TOO ACADEMIC 1 2 3 4

B) CINEMA PAPERSSHOULD BE PUBLISHED MORE OFTEN 1 2 3 4

C) CINEMA PAPERS SHOULD CONCENTRATE ONAUSTRALIAN RATHER THAN INTERNATIONAL STORIES 1 2 3 4

D) THE CONTENTS OF CINEMA PAPERSARE OUT OF DATE BY THE TIME IT COMES OUT 1 2 3 4

E) THE FEATURESIN CINEMA PAPERS ARE TOO LONG 1 2 3 4

What do you like most about CINEMA PAPERS?

What do you like the least about CINEMA PAPERS?

How often do you read the following magazines?EVERY ISSUE MOST ISSUES OCCASSIONALLY

A) B AND T 1 2 3B) FACE/BUTZ 1 2 3C) THE BULLETIN 1 2 3D) ENCORE 1 2 3E) ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS REVIEW 1 2 3F) FILM COMMENT 1 2 3G) ROLLING STONE 1 2 3

NEVER4444444

In an average w eek about how many hours would you spend watching the followingtelevision stations?

DO NOT LESS THAN 2-6 6-10 MORE THANWATCH 2 HOURS HOURS HOURS 10 HOURS

ABC 1 2 3 4 5SBS 1 2 3 4 5COMMERCIAL TELEVISION 1 2 3 4 5

W ould you rent videos of movies regularly REGULARLY 1occasionally or never? OCCASIONALLY 2

DON'T HAVE VCR/NEVER 3

How often would you go to see the following type of films?

A) 'ART HOUSE' EUROPEAN FILMS

ONCE A MONTH OR MORE

1

EVERY 2-3 MONTHS

2

LESSOFTEN

3NEVER

4B) AUSTRALIAN FILMS 1 2 3 4C) DOCUMENTARIES AND SHORTS 1 2 3 4D) FRINGE OR EXPERIMENTAL FILMS 1 2 3 4E) MAINSTREAM AMERICAN FILMS 1 2 3 4

C I N E M A P A P E R S R E A D E R S H I P Q U E S T I O N N A I R E

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QUESTION 14:

QUESTION 15:

QUESTION 16:

QUESTION 17:

QUESTION 18 (a):

When w as the last time you did any of the following?IN LAST MORE THAN 1

YEAR YEAR AGO NEVER

A) ATTENDED A FILM FESTIVAL 1 2 3B) TRAVELLED INTERSTATE 1 2 3C) TRAVELLED OVERSEAS 1 2 3D) BOUGHT A TV, VIDEO OR STEREO 1 2 3E) BOUGHT A FRIDGE, STOVE, WASHING MACHINE, DRYER T 2 3F) BOUGHT A COMPUTER OR FAX FOR USE AT HOME OR WORKG) OBTAINED A LOAN FROM A BANK, BUILDING SOCIETY

1 2 3

OR CREDIT UNION l 2 3H) BOUGHT A VIDEO CAMERA l 2 31) BOUGHT A SUPER 8 CAMERA 1 2 3

Is the car you m ainly drive ... AUSTRALIAN-MADE 1IMPORTED 2OR, YOU DO NOT DRIVE A CAR 3

W ould you drink an y of the following things every w ee k , at least once a month,less often or never?

AT LEAST ONCEEVERY WEEK A MONTH LESS OFTEN NEVER

A) DRINK WINE, CHAMPAGNE OR PORT 1 2 3 4B) DRINK EITHER LOCAL OR IMPORTED BEERC) DRINK SPIRITS SUCH AS SCOTCH, BRANDY

1 2 3 4

OR GIN 1 2 3 4

Do you sm oke cigarettes? YES 1NO 2

Do you currently w o rk full time, part time or not at a ll? FULL TIME 1PART TIME 2 NOT AT ALL 3

W hat is your job title?

QUESTION 18 (b): In what field is that?

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# If you prefer anonym ity, it is not necessary to complete your nam e and address. To qualify to w in a prize, how ever, w e w ill require this information in order to notify the w inners. All prizew inners w ill app ear in a future issue of CINEMA PAPERS.

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LEFT, TOP : FRED SCHEPISt DIRECTS TRACEY ULLMAN (CENTRE)

AND MERYL STREEP ON THE SET OF PLENTY. PRESSMAN WAS THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.

MIDDLE: ONE EUROPEAN PICTURE EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY PRESSMAN WAS RAINER WERNER

FASSBINDER'S DESPAIR. VOLKER SPENGLER, DIRK BOGARDE AND ANDREA FERREOL

BOTTOM: MARTIN SHEEN IN WALL STREET. THIS PAGE: EDWARD PRESSMAN AT THE AFTRS

(PHOTO NINA LANDIS)

to act as expensive procedures for turning down screenplays. One ad­ministrative decision I learnt from De Laurentiis is that you don’t need big story departments because ultimately you have to make decisions yourself. Ron Shelton [BullD urham ], a bright writer, headed my story department. He was ideally placed to assess realistic dramas but would not have been an ideal choice to read a science fiction idea. In some ways it makes more sense to show a project I have expressed an interest in to friends like Stone or De Palma, who are filmmakers dealing with a specific type o f genre.

We do employ a fellow in our company who is in charge o f creative affairs, but that is really an administrative position which helps me to be polite with submissions that are sent in.

I don’t look for scripts that way. In fact, I find it difficult responding to a screenplay, regardless o f the quality, without mentally placing it in the context o f a filmmaker.

I f a filmmaker is smart and wants to tackle a specific project, he or she can convey a valid way to approach the subject. I like to back one vision and go with it all the way without having to second-guess myself. My natural inclination is to approach the decision process in the same manner as I did when I began making films in partnership with Paul Williams. A true collaboration does not involve making easy divisions between the creative and the business deci­sions. It can be a really enjoyable process of learning together.q u e s t io n : You backed Steve Dejarnatt’s first feature, Cherry2000(1988), a futuristic sci- fi genre piece, which was not released in the US despite the marquee value o f Melanie Griffith.p r es s m a n : The head of distribution at Orion,Joel Resnick, really didn’t like the film.Strangely enough, when we showed Cherry 2000 to people at Universal, they offered to buy it and screen the film in 800 cinemas. I tried to negotiate a deal between the two companies, but Orion wanted more money than Universal was willing to pay.

To prove their prophecy was correct, the film was opened in a small Texas town.It was certainly a playable movie and I fail to see why it was buried. Australia was one of the few international markets where the film received any playdates, but the ad campaign was dreadful. q u e s t io n : Do you find that the studios are still pushing their marketing strategies towards the so-called ‘youth market’ at the expense o f adult audiences? p r es s m a n : Recently a wave o f films has been released to good figures [Beaches, Cousins,Bull Durham^ Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society\ that are aimed at a more mature market, so maybe the distributors have woken up to the fact that the yuppie audience is ageing. There is definitely an appreciation for stylistic virtuosity, especially when it can attract talent as in the case o f director, Tim Burton [Beetlejuice, Batm an].q u e s t io n : In the continuing battle to raise funds, do you think that there are now wider options in the area o f creative financing, especially with the emergence o f video, cable and record companies into the business?p r es s m a n : When I was involved with Plenty (198 5), I recall that a group o f horse-racing fans from Texas actually provided a letter o f credit to ensure that Fox would not incur any deficit whatsoever in the

advertising. A similar arrangement existed on H a lf Mo on Street(1986). Financing options are constantly changing and I try to keep ahead of the game. When German tax shelters were in vogue we managed to use this avenue for Despair (1978) and Das Boot (1982).

The studios control the video and cable markets, but they are powerless to prevent globally ambitious companies from getting in on the act. As an independent, I see an opportunity to align myself with these international forces, while still working through the studios in the American market. It doesn’t make sense to compete in the US theatrical market as Dino, New World and Weintraub have found out at great cost. I can thus operate through the studios but as an alliance with these international entities.q u e s t io n : It seems that you are susceptible to a certain kind o f criticism from critics who attach a moral superiority argument to the intrinsic worth and integrity o f low-budget features as opposed to higher budget films.PRESSMAN: It ’s a kind o f reverse snobbery that is manifested when certain people look down on the popular success and public acceptance o f home-grown hits like the Mad Max series, Crocodile Dundee 2n d Toung Einstein. These films are not abnormalities but are representa­tive examples o f what original filmmaking can accomplish in the world

market.q u e s t io n : As an independent producer you have prided yourself on anticipating trends rather than following them. For example, Conan the B arbarian (1982) ushered in a sword-and-sorcery cycle that continues to this day, but are you also accused of commer­cial opportunism yourself by others? p r es s m a n : Badlands was released at a time when Thieves Like Us and Sugarland Express were coming out. Similarly, The Revolution­ary was released at the same time that The Strawberry Statement was playing. You be­come a victim of these coincidental circum­stances and learn to live with it. I am cur­rently preparing a film version o f the futuris­tic comic strip, Judge D redd [which has been in development for more than three years], just as Batm an , Dick Tracy and Watchmen are entering the marketplace. I like to think that Judge DrediUs sensibility is somewhat different from that of films like Batm an and more similar to M ad M ax or RoboCop. q u e s t io n : How do you react to the criticism that you are merely a dealmaker? p r es s m a n : To be called a dealmaker implies a degree o f detached, economic motivation. Many o f the projects I have completed are completely illogical in business terms and were not what could be classified as sure-fire business deals. Once again we are faced with the polarity o f art and commerce with the

implication being that you are either in one camp or the other. By its very nature, filmmaking is a synthesis o f both these elements. It’s a collaborative medium involving enormous capital and diverse func­tions. To get any film made involves making a deal which can get very complicated, but it’s a means to an end. I don’t enjoy going out and raising money, and I certainly don’t do it as my personal kick. q u e s t io n : One collaboration that holds a special fondness for you was the David Byrne feature, True Stories ( 1986).p r es s m a n : The making o f True Stories was a great learning process for both o f us. David learned the basic fundamentals of film technique and created the film in the process o f making it, rather than merely

Once again we are faced

with the polarity of art and commerce with

the implication being that you are either in

one camp or the other. By its very nature,

filmmaking is a synthesis of both these

elements. It's a collaborative medium

involving enormous capital and diverse

functions... I don't enjoy going out and

raising money, and I certainly don't do it

as my personal kick.

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 41

recreating what was in the script. He allowed himself the freedom and the flexibility to play with the material and, in the process of editing, it changed enormously. It was a very exciting intellectual process, totally original and it looked at the medium in a manner that was totally fresh.q u es t io n : Looking to the future, what has happened to your planned collaboration with Kenneth Anger on an adaptation of Hollywood Babylon?p r es s m a n : Several treatments were written but the main problem here lies in the complex idea of creating a cinematic equivalent to the books that would somehow illustrate the underside of Hollywood’s history. We toyed with the idea of recreating scenes, such as the infamous Fatty Arbuckle party, but this could be dubious.q u e s t io n : You are also planning a collaboration with Japanese director, Juzo Itami [ The Funeral, Tampopo].p r es s m a n : I am hoping to undertake a project with him that would be shot in America and Japan. It mainly depends on when he is ready as we have been discussing it for two years now. q u es t io n : And what about working with Jean-Jacques Beineix? p r es s m a n : We have developed a script with him called The T ear O f The Gun, which is about the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro. After spending a lot of money and time with the writer he chose, he decided not to go ahead with the project. The script has now been rewritten and we hope to make the film in conjunction with English producer, Eric Fellner [Sid A nd Nancy] and are currently looking for a new director. Despite these problems, Beineix is a filmmaker I would very much like to work with.q u es t io n : Kathryn Bigelow just recently directed Blue Steel for your company.p r es s m a n : Blue Steel'is an action thriller with an obsessional undercur­rent that owes more to F atal Attraction than the Dirty Harry movies. Kathryn had previously worked with Oliver Stone on a project about street gangs in East LA which never came to be. One of the main reasons I became involved with Kathryn before the release of her

previous feature, N ear D ark, was that I had heard from several sources that she was an unusual talent.q u es t io n : Finally, with all this film activity I am surprised to hear that you and Brian De Palma are planning a stage venture together. p r es sm a n : Brian and I are very keen to stage a version o f Phantom O f The Paradise in New York. Paul Williams has composed a special score with a dozen new songs. Brian was all set to go when he was offered the film of The Bonfire o f the Vanities. Someday it will happen.

FILMOGRAPHY1969 Out o f I t (Paul Williams) - producer1970 The Revolutionary (Paul Williams) - producer1972 D ealing (Paul Williams) - producer1973 Badlands (Terrence Malick) - producer1973 Sisters (Brian De Palma) - producer1974 Phantom o f the Paradise (Brian De Palma) - producer 1978 Despair (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - exec, producer1978 Paradise Alley (Sylvester Stallone) - exec, producer1979 Old Boyfriends (Joan Tewkesbury) - producer1980 H eart Beat (John Byrum) - exec, producer1980 Victoria (Bo Widerburg) - exec, producer1981 The H an d (Oliver Stone) - producer1982 Conan the B arbarian (John Milius) - exec, producer1982 Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson) - exec, producer1983 Pirates o f Penzance (Wilford Leach) - exec, producer1985 Plenty (Fred Schepisi) - exec, producer1986 Crimewave (Sam Raimi) - exec, producer 1986 H a lf Moon Street (Bob Swaim) - exec, producer1986 True Stories (David Byrne) - exec, producer1987 Cherry 2000 (Steve Dejarnatt) - exec, producer 1987 Good Morning, Babylon (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)

- exec, producer1987 Masters o f the Universe (Gary Goddard) - producer 1987 Walker (Alex Cox) - exec, producer1987 Wall Street (Oliver Stone) - producer1988 Talk R adio (Oliver Stone) - producer1989 Paris by Night (David Hare) - exec, producer 1989 Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow) - producer

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Television • Theatre... We haveSpecial effects Make-up in these Famous names and brands

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• L ectu re D em o n stra tio nAll aspects of make-up for schools, amateur theatre and interested groups.

Private appo in tm en t only: Facia l pros thet ic and skin camouflage: R e m e d ia l Tecli- nicpies: D irect likeness; H e a d sculptures c r ea ted in b ro n z e , resin and p las te

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Congratulations to all our past and present students trho are continuing tcilh excellence the high standard in M ake-up and Specia l E fecls fo r our Film. Television, Theatre, High Fashion and A rt/Sculpture, plus o ther rela ted areas o f em ploy­ment fo r m ake-up artists.

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• Will Andrade’s selection of plays available for hire

For fu rth er inform ation w rite or telephone D awn Swane RADA, ASMA, Principal and Founder

4 2 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

Australian Film Commission

The Film Development Division of the Australian Film Commission wishes to advise applicants to the Creative Development Fund, Special Production Fund,

the Script Unit and the Documentary Development Fund that new application and assessment procedures have recently been introduced and that new guidelines outlining

these changes are now available.

The traditional application process for many forms o f financial assistance, with cut-off dates for applications, has now been replaced by a more flexible approach to

assessment and decision-making. Applicants are now invited to apply at any time for script development, pre-production assistance, production grants and production investment.

8 - 1 0 December 1989, Brisbane

The seminar will bring together members of the legal, media and arts communities in discussion of moral rights and royalties. Particular attention will be given to information on the current national and international state of these rights.

Speakers will include• PROFESSOR JANE GINSBURG, School of Law, Columbia University, New York: on the current situation of moral rights in the U.S. and on the colorisation of black and white films.

• SAM RICKETSON, author o f THE BERNE CONVENTION, 1886- 1986: on Australia's international obligations under that treaty

• A member of the working group on U.S. Adherenceto the Berne Convention: on the American media industries' resistance to moral rights protection.

Attendance is limited to 100 participants.The seminar director is DAVID SAUNDERS.

For information contact Sharon Clifford, Administrative Officer, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University,Nathan, Queensland. 4111.Telephone: Tuesday - Friday 9.00am to 4.00 pm (07) 275 7772 Fax (07) 275 7730

COPIES OF THE NEW GUIDELINES ARE AVAILABLE FROM

Sydney: 8 West Street, North Sydney NSW 2060 Telephone (02) 925 7333 Toll Free (008) 22 6615

Fax (02) 922 2264

Melbourne: 185 Bank Street South Melbourne V ic 3205 Telephone (03) 690 5144 Toll Free (008) 33 8430

Fax (03) 696 1476

INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL POLICY STUDIESDivision of Humanities, Griffith University

(with the support of the Australia Council and the Australian Film Commission)

SEMINAR:MORAL AND PECUNIARY RIGHTS

C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 4 3

1 N D M E L B O U R N E F I L M F E S T I V A L S R E P O R T

H U N T E R C O R D A I Y

> Film MattersT h e 1 9 8 9 S y d n e y F i l m F e s t i v a l

FILM FESTIVAL ARTICLES DESERVE A POETIC OPENING, SOME GESTURE TOWARDS DRAWING

BACK A VELVETED CURTAIN. THEIR SUBJECTS ARE THE CINEMATIC EQUIVALENTS OF MAGIC

ELIXIRS: WE LOOK TO THEM TO CURE OUR MALADIES, AND WEAR THE EXPERIENCE AS AN

AMULET TO WARD OFF BANAL VISIONS ON SCREENS LARGE OR SMALL IN THE COMING

IT IS COMMONLY SAID that film festivals in Australia have an important role in support­ing or augmenting the local distribution patterns by bringing new films to the attent­

ion o f local distributors. And while it is true that several o f the films screened at the Sydney Film Festival are being released in Australia (including The Vanishing, High Hopes, Salaam Bombay and Hibiscus Town), it could be argued that festivals also highlight precisely what is not being distributed in Australia. They show us what we’re missing because part o f their attraction is the rarity value o f the films screened - radical, exotic, esoteric.

What’s at stake is something very precious: a film culture. The influence festivals have on film culture is varied but vital, and includes the inspiring o f local writers, directors, designers, actors; discussions with visiting directors (ranging from audiences to industry profession­als and film bureaucrats); and critical reception ofimages by audiences and the culture press. Without festivals we’d only see our own films (or other versions o f them from California) and have a narrow critical perspective from which to assess cinema. In these times, the possibility o f such parochialism has already appeared on the horizon as the industry becomes an officially incorporated monolith and diversity of cultural criticism is under threat. The danger is uniformity, on screen and page. Therefore, the responsibility o f any film festival is weighty, and, though the tasks I have just assigned to it may only be partially achieved, this report looks towards those ideals in its judgements.

The familiar structure o f the Festival has been maintained by its new Director, Paul Byrnes, with a main program of films in the State cinema (referred to in this article), and a program o f documentaries, short films and forums in the smaller State Two cinema. The Festival also maintained its short film awards, now sponsored by the Dendy Cinema (see separate list), which were presented on opening night. I f the audience was looking for indications o f a new style to the Festival, then Paul Byrnes attempted to give it with his speech, in which he wanted the Festival to demonstrate that a film was more than enter­tainment, that watching these films was a form o f freedom o f expres­sion which at that time was being cruelly crushed on the streets of Beijing, and, lastly, to give the Festival a slogan, he wanted the Festival to show that “film really does matter.”

(TEXTS, PSYCHOLOGY, VISIONS)The feature films screened this year were polarized between inspired (and inspiring) visions, and lack-lustre, often self-indulgent narratives.

C I N E M A P

YEAR. BUT THEN THE POETRY SHOULD BE PUT ASIDE

BECAUSE FESTIVALS ALSO DEMAND OUR ATTEN­

TION AS PRINCIPAL FORUMS ON THE CURRENT

STATE OF WORLD CINEMA. THEY SHOULD SHOW US

VISIONS FROM OTHER CULTURES AND METHODS

FROM OTHER PRODUCTION STRUCTURES.

It is difficult to decide if this dichotomy occurred because better quality films were not available (there is, after all, a discernible cycle in which some years produce, by coincidence, a better ‘crop’ than others), or represents poor selection choices. This assessment is made even harder by the fact that Paul Byrnes took up his position only five months ago, limiting the time and scope of the films for selection. Any Festival needs a year to be assembled, and a fairer judgement can be made after next year’s. The best features shared a depth o f vision, wit and an exploration o f human values. In this category were Someone to Love, Turmoil, The Vanishing, High Hopes, Summer Vacation 1999 and Tabataba.

Henry Jaglom’s Someone to Love is a film about Americans on the make, and Orson Welles holding court. The two threads intertwine as a group o f actors gather on St Valentine’s Day in a soon-to-be- demolished LA theatre. Posing as a filmed investigation into their loneliness and the difficulty o f keeping any relationship viable, Someone to Love is also concerned with the difficulty o f art. Jaglom plays a director who manipulates all for the sake o f his film, once turning away from a seemingly sincere moment with his girlfriend to ask the camera operator if the shot was good. On stage the ‘characters’, including Welles’s companion, Oja Kodar, talk about love and life (“ life’s never better than Leave I t To Beaver’’’), making cumbersome plays for each other (“ Shall we have major sex later?”) and try to escape Jaglom’s ever-present 35 mm eye (“Who do I have to fuck to get O U T o f this movie?”). Welles, speaking from ‘the cheap seats’, comments teasingly on language, acting and love. This is his last screen performance, and appropriately he takes over the proceedings by the sheer force and bluster o f his experience and wisdom.

Mike Leigh’s High Hopes clearly shows that if a similar meeting were held on his set, the outcome would be radically different. Patiently digging away at Thatcherite Britain, Leigh’s film obviously

A P E R S 7 5 4 5

cares for its characters caught in an uncaring society. His film charts the changes now overtaking Britain through a close and tender study of a family so obsessed with petty squabbles that ‘big’ issues come as a pleasant relief. High Hopes has a refreshing black humour which could have been distributed more widely through other films screened this year.

George Sluizer’s The Vanishing is a film which will undoubtedly provoke audiences when it is released. Chosen by the Australian Film Critics’ Circle as “Best Film” (in contrast to the audience, which selected Salaam Bombay), Sluizer’s film is an entrancing study of the psychology of murder. It is not afraid to confront its audience with the possibility that a murderer may act from the coldest of calculations. The Vanishing was the most disturbing, uncomfortable film shown at the Festival, yet it also had some of the most effectively compelling images and the most tighdy structured script. Like its central character, Sluizer’s film seeks perfection in everything.

Away from Los Angeles and Europe, there is another cinema which was sparsely represented this year. The three films of note, from countries as diverse as Japan, India and Madagascar, were impressive for their inventive narrative structures and production values in the face of immense restrictions (Dr Bhabendra Nath Saika’s Turmoil, for example, like last year’s Catastrophe, comes from Assam and represents radical independent filmmaking from that province). Shusuke Kaneko’s Summer V acation l999, which has already received the new director award from the Japanese Film-makers’ Union, sub­verts the traditional gender roles of Japanese theatre, while Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s Tabataba was a moving exploration of the anti-colonial revolt in Madagascar in 1947. It shows the effects of the war on villagers rather than events from the front-line: men leave to become heroes, the village suffers from marauding soldiers, propaganda leaflets from each side float down the river.

(THE WIND, THE PAST, THE PRESENT)Documentaries had a particularly strong presence this year. All except for the confused and confusing John Duigan’s

Bitter Rice confirmed cinema’s concern for the human condition. Marcel Ophuls’s Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times o f K laus Barbie and Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s A Tale o f the Wind were the most notable. Ophuls’s film was a masterly study o f Klaus Barbie largely through the words (excuses) o f his American and South American protectors. The film has moments o f the most terrible memories, and a dark irony (soon after the war Barbie hid in the house of the Brothers Grimm) which continually asserts the need for filmmakers to continue documenting this history. This need was poignandy shown in Voices from the Attic: when Debbie Goldstein returned to Poland from America to revisit her family home, a fresh swastika had been painted on the door.

On other continents, Peter Raymont’s The World is Watching detailed presence of American news crews in Nicaragua and their processing of news for prime-time US television news, exposing the tenuous fink those programs have with real events. By contrast, Joris Ivens, who dedicated his life to filming the reality of events, turned to a more poetical vision in A Tale o f the Wind, which is a pursuit o f the invisible, from Chinese desert to mountain top and film studio. Sadly, this was his last film.

(OUT OF THE PAST, THE FUTURE BRIEFLY)The Festival continued to show restorations, this year screening John Ford’s She Wore A Yellow R ibbon ,D .W . Griffith’s Way Down East, and David Lean’s Lawrence o f A rabia, which, to borrow from Rene Clair,

LEFT: ORSON WELLES HOLDS COURT WITH

HENRY JAGLOM IN JAGLOM'S SOMEONE TO LOVE.

BELOW: IVEN'S AND LORIDAN'S

TALE OF THE WIND.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Keep Your Right Up (in which he asserts that any creation these days is a miracle), Claude Chabrol’s Women}s Business and Rene Clair’s superb 14 July. French cinema has been funda­mental to the development o f film meth­ods and criticism, and if this Festival had a major flaw in its programming it was the weak and timid tribute to this his­tory. A more rigorous choice from a longer fist that might have included Pagnol, Vigo, Renoir, Carne, Demy, Rohmer, Truffaut, Rivette ...

(FRENCH CINEMA)The Festival presented a celebration of French cinema to mark the Bicentenary of the Revolution. Three films (Magali Clement’s JeanneSHouse, Jean-Claude Brisseau’s The Sound and the Fury and Francois Dupeyron’s A Strange Place fo r a Meeting) were shown on a special ‘tribute’ night, and, along with the opening film, Michel Delville’s La Lectrice, proved that France is quite capable of making films as shallow and trite as any other country. The real tribute was scattered elsewhere in the program and included

4 6 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

shows how a cinema which “pins down the fleeting aspect o f people and things, in the end falls victim to the time it challenged”.

Lean’s film is a handsome anachronism, a study of enigmatic character as hero which details Lawrence’s actions without revealing the strong motivating reasons (political or psychological) for so much beautifully filmed dramatic behaviour. Whatever the motives for re- releasing restored films, their impact on film history will be significant and festivals are likely to be the main venues for presenting such important historical texts.

Briefly, three short films which exemplified the best o f a promised future for cinema: Norman Hull’s Out o f Town , Alison Maclean’s Kitchen Sink, which was voted Best Short by the Festival audience, and Geoffrey Wright’s Lover Boy . Hull’s film confirms what we learnt in High Hopes, namely that the new Britain can be an unfriendly place where those with their feet caught in holes are more likely to be beaten up than helped. Wright’s featurette, one o f the few Australian films of consequence in this Festival, quickly escapes a rather standard opening to develop an imaginative tale of love across the generations. Such films are often the beginnings o f careers in features, and are the most difficult to produce and market, especially at the beginning o f a professional life. The role o f the Australian Film Commission in developing these careers was central to Peter Sainsbury’s presentation o f the Ian McPherson Memorial Lecture. While he said that “without the AFC there would not be any real site for the systematic support of new Australian talent or o f its skilled personnel, and without that there would be no real industry”, the AFC has been under review for the past six months. In effect, with the massive structural changes in the industry (Film Finance Corporation et al), the AFC is also at the crossroads, and in real need of redesign.

Peter Sainsbury identified some of the bureaucratic obstacles that have clearly hindered creativity (“before too long what you find is that creative endeavour is being administered and managed and it’s not

being supported”). The result can be, “with some very notable exceptions, a whole raft o f pretty boring movies”. Though the review is still taking place, the way forward seems to be a reduction in the dominating role o f policy to allow greater flexibility in the workings o f the AFC at all levels. I f this can be sustained, then the AFC may be able to resist the noticeable push for conservative cultural consensus rather than diversity.

(LAST WORDS)One of the most significant screenings at the Festival was the four hours of advertisements (“LaNuit des Publivores”). The program was sold out, and, if one is looking for cultural indicators for these times, this program, which brought a new audience to the Festival, is important. Sadly, the same enthusiastic response cannot be reported for Australian features which, again, were absent, and clearly one of the new Festival Director’s tasks will be to coax Australian films back to the Festival screen. By building and expanding on a Festival ‘culture’, audiences may also be encouraged to stay longer and view with more cultural tolerance some of the films rashly perceived as ‘difficult’ (Greg Araki’s The Long Weekend, for example). There is a need for more special programs (a retrospective of American avant-garde film, for example); and the near absence o f African films was very noticeable, and regrettable, especially after the successful AFI season last year. Lastly, the most fundamental change the Festival needs to make is a closer commitment to Asian and Oriental cinema. The 1986 program convened by T ony Rayns remains one o f the most culturally influential events at a recent Sydney Festival. As the industry and film culture enters what might be kindly called a ‘period of readjustment’, the Festival has the opportunity, and challenge, to maintain the breadth and depth o f our cinematic experience. Soigne ta Droite!

1. From How Films are Made, London, 1953. Trans. Vera Traill, published in Film: Anthology, edited by Daniel Talbot, Berkeley, 1967.

R A F F A E L E C A P U T O

^Taking Time Out3 8 t h M e l b o u r n e F i l m F e s t i v a l 1 9 8 9

H E 38TH M ELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL - let’s take time out from the Festival proper and begin at a place which could signal traces of an undisclosed characteristic of the Festival; but, because undiscl­

osed, it comes at you as a kind of word or thought in abeyance of another time, a kind o f purposeful, residual after-effect.

Among the ensemble o f disparate and disconnected images re­tained from the Festival, one which stands out is o f a woman who accentuates a particular pose within a particular setting, and it leads one to affirm a particular position in relation to the Festival. But this image does not belong to that o f the moving image, instead it forms part o f a photo-collage. The woman situated at the bottom far left o f the frame has her arm and hand extended and is gesturing in a somewhat affected manner. She leans back only slightly, and with her face in three-quarter profile she glances off to the left o f the frame. Her neck is long; one could say, aristocratic. She wears an evening dress, closely fitted, with a stole draped over her extended arm. Just over to the right and extending across to the edge o f the frame, this same image is repeated a number o f times along the foreground, except the gesturing arm is cut off. This woman is very familiar, her pose and posture no doubt one has seen before. She is a representation of a representation. She is most likely a model in a pose characteristic of

fashion ads of the late Fifties or early Sixties. Yet with her duplicated figure resembles a cut-out, and her image frozen in grey is like a pho­tocopy. All the same, her style of dress, her gesture, her look, her very comportment speaks of good taste, o f social grace, of distinction, of gentility. In short, o f a lifestyle that is bourgeois.

Forming the background o f the collage is a street and building which one cannot specifically place, though one can recognize it in a general sense as “European”. Discernible in places is rubble gathered up against the building; it is reminiscent o f images of a war-torn city. The building appears time-worn, decaying and unstable - its architec­tural fines are mismatched, and part o f the building looks as though it is about to crumble. Slightly off centre, and as though it protrudes from the building, is the Astor Theatre’s neon sign, and to the left, as though tenuously suspended, is an acutely ornamental blank screen with the word “coming” displayed at its crest. It too appears as if it is about to topple.

It’s the image on the cover o f the Festival program - a photo­collage originally tided “Occidental Tourist” by Melbourne-based photographer Chris Barry. In this case, however, the “Occidental Tourist” is reconstructed in order to fine the work directly within the context o f the Festival - the neon sign and the blank screen are two of the added, distinctive marks o f and for the Film Festival.

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 4 7

I f we can speak o f an original and an altered work then both compositions are visually striking, and aesthetically pleasing, though this is not our immediate concern; nor is the notion of origin, for the fact o f collage already makes the notion o f origin irresolute, it is always a work in itself and an altered work at the same time. But, insofar as the “Occidental Tourist” existed prior to the Festival, what becomes important here is not only that a particular image was selected and placed within the Festival context or that the Festival subsumes this work for its own purposes, but also that it was necessary that in some way that the Festival be identified and placed within the work itself.

Certainly, without the distinctive marks one could wonder about the choice of image, although in one respect, the markers function to shift aside any such questioning. It is because o f the markers that some kind of conception of the Festival becomes especially anchored, but, on the other hand, there is another time and place, another context, which is that within the frame of the photo-collage. Though, more precisely, one should say time is taken out, there isn’t a sense o f an unfolding, but of time in abeyance, and a spatializing effect of dr a van g back within the frame.

The result is that Barry’s collage curiously reinvokes and speaks of an amorphous, adjectival, listless, second-hand collection of ideas that the Festival more than often invokes: the unconventional, the new, the cinema of taste and quality, the rediscovered masterwork, and at the heart o f these is the unspoken term, “Europe”. That is to say, an idea of Europe, and “Europe” in this context cannot stand for anything other than a bourgeois ideal. In respect of the collage, however, owing to the fact that the Festival needed to be located within it, one could say the Festival no longer forms the context for something else; instead, the photo-collage reverses the order of things and (re)contextualizes the Festival. Thus, what is original is second-hand, what is more is only more of the same, what is new is old and decaying. It’s as if there are two perspectives in agreement with one another, yet one is tending to turn against the other by using the other’s own frame of reference.

ONE ON ONE FILM FESTIVALThis said, one may wonder what film would fit the image o f the Festival perfectly. I f there were a perfect Festival film this year it would have to be Ian Pringle’s The Prisoner o f St Petersburg . As the program notes state, Prisoner is “imbued with an unmistakably European sensibility”. But it’s something less than a sensibility. In essence, this film is a garish journey into a kind of metaphysics of how to be a European filmmaker. Though it seems Pringle isn’t interested in being a filmmaker; he wants to be a/the “director”. Quote marks are essential here.

Prisoner concerns the deluded, existential wanderings of a trio of supposed misfits through the after-dark streets of Berlin. At the centre of this trio is Jack (Noah Taylor) whose sense of reality is possessed by 19th-century visions, his mind crazed by the literary imagination of Gogol and Dostoyevsky. With the madman character at its centre, Prisoner is in a way an ode to German expressionism. But it’s an expressionism gone flat, for the sense of madness or alienation that it wants to evoke has to be carried by an oppressive use of black-and- white photography and overdetermined acting gestures. And the problem is that this is all it can ever be - overdetermined and oppressive - for it only calls attention to itself, it’s an exalted rather than an expressive style. It ’s a deluded sensibiity which believes that a few overdone, basic devices such as shooting at oblique angles in chiaro­scuro effect is the hallmark of an expressionist visual style.

On a one-on-one basis, if there were a sort of stab-in-the-back companion piece to Prisoner o f St. Petersburg I would have to say it would be Bruce Weber’s documentary feature on Chet Baker, L et’s Get L ost. Perhaps it’s a superficial comparison, but through Weber’s use of black and white photography in settling the brooding, time- chiselled looks o f Baker (dressed mostly in black) in the often cool- white, tilted, oblong compositions, Let’s Get Lost could be retided L et’s Go C razy .

It ’s a documentary, sure, but there’s still every chance o f roman­ticizing Baker in the way that Pringle romanticizes the alienated. Weber’s compositions and style are not affected to the point that they become cliche, but rather form a jagged density of textures by shifting from, say, the glamour shots of an enormously photogenic Baker o f the Fifties, to compositions made up o f sharp contours and lines, to the

CHET BAKER IN BRUCE WEBER'S LET'S GET LOST, A JAGGED DENSITY OF TEXTURES.

smouldering effects o f either extreme close-ups or fidgety hand-held shots. There’s a kind of movement of texture replacing texture in this film, and in all this there’s a search for Baker. But it doesn’t seem possible to extricate Baker from it, he forms a part o f it, he gets lost within it. Oddly enough, one could probably place it next to Nick Broomfield’s Driving Me Crazy, essentially because the kind of madness both these films prevail upon is a genuine, everyday kind.

HIT AND RUNNow, if we could proceed further on a one-on-one basis, matters would be easy, but no such luck. The Festival this year was such a hodge-podge of programming that it seemed to reflect a cultural policy based on a hit-and-run mentality. The retrospectives, for instance, were incredibly varied: the films o f Mike Leigh, the restored 1930 sound film The B at Whispers, Fritz Lang’s The Big H eat and Nick Ray’s In A Lonely Place, an Indonesian film The Ronggeng Dancer, the National Film Board of CanadaTribute, and finally the George Kuchar retrospective.

Programming retrospectives implies that there is an importance in re-calling these films, a significance in looking back at them even if for the first time. Therefore, they should share a special and equal status. Yet, their position in the program suggests otherwise. The Kuchar and Leigh retrospectives were in the companion program at the State Film Centre. The others were all featured as part o f the main program, yet there were some significant disparities: the Canada Tribute had a once- only weekday screening at noon; The Ronggeng D ancer a once-only Saturday morning screening; The Big H eat and In A Lonely Place also had a once-only screening, but an evening session where all patrons had to buy separate tickets. But what is the context for having these films as retrospectives? With The Big H eat and In A Lonely Place, for instance, what, apart from their being new 35mm prints, is the rationale for their screening and for the way they were screened? It’s a question I cannot begin to answer without being offensive.

However, what’s worse than the inconsistencies o f the program is the overall mediocrity o f the entire program. Usually in past years there is at least a handful o f feature films that makes the event something of an event, though this year there is not one which can be said to eclipse a set o f others. Instead, they seem to be all set in one long monotonal strip. (Though in closing, I feel the need to at least nod toward two short documentaries: a student film titled Life A t M a’s and David Caesar’s Body Work. ) The Festival, despite its complementary and sometime courageous excursions from the main program, will always be something of a white elephant event because it’s so deliberately a showcase for a particular kind o f film culture without wanting to be either deliberate or particular about it, and, even more so, because this is seemingly non-ideological. ■

4 8 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

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C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 4 9

K e e p i n g i t a l i v e to the l a s t second

• Digital Film Sound at Albert StudiosBRUCE BROW N AND RUSSELL DUNLOP HAVE LEARNED THEIR

CRAFT FROM THE BEST FILM POST-PRODUCTION PEOPLE IN THE

BUSINESS, SUCH AS THREE-TIME ACADEM Y-AW ARD-W INNER M ARK

BERGER (APOCALYPSE NOW) AND TOM LINSON HOLM AN, CHIEF

W HEN Bruce and Russell show visitors to Albert Studios their demo reel

(with eight inserts o f them at work taken on their video 8), you realize that they are learning from these top sound mixers by working back­wards; learning from listening and analyzing the work of the best film soundtracks released on VHS. The reel has segments from commer­cially available surround-encoded tapes of RoboCop and Poltergeist, with examples o f their own work that echoes the same technically ac­complished mixes. The surround sound leaps around the walls o f the mixing suite, and the digital audio quality from the big monitor speakers sent shivers through me.

For sometime after leaving, I was juggling the arguments for sprockets versus video and digital, but I am left with the feeling that the changes they are making to the way we are accustomed to work are inevitable. The other feeling I had was that I wanted to write about them because they honestly expressed fun and enthusiasm for creative filmmaking.

BACKGROUND, MUSICRussell was the first to joke about it, when I talked about friends I have with home-video sound decoders and surround speaker systems in their living rooms, and o f being trapped into sitting for hours listening to the latest features at full volume as they show off the equipment. “I don’t mind, because I can watch movies all day, every day. I have hundreds of them. I sometimes think I ’ll end up like Howard Hughes watching Ice Station Zebra. I like pictures, and once I got involved with a few bits and pieces, I started to really analyze things. And you know how that destroys the innocent way o f looking at movies. It’s like the joy o f just playing music compared to having to record it; something goes out of it.”

Russell had been playing drums in bands for years with people like Renee Geyer. From session playing he decided that he’d try the other side o f the microphone with Bruce. They started to produce albums together for Mental as Anything, John English and Kevin Borich, work they modestly call “reasonably successful”. They put out some o f their own records “using bodgy names, as a bit o f fun”.

While it was often fun, it became tiring. “After ten or so albums”, as Russell said, “it was becoming repetitive, like doing a stage show every night. So, we decided to get into the pictures.” Having done a lot o f TV commercial music tracks, they liked the feeling that with film there was always something to learn, and that it was somehow more ‘professional’. This is, Russell believes, “probably because there is so

I N E M A & P

AUDIO ENGINEER AT LUCASFILM AND

DESIGNER OF THE THX SYSTEM. YET, BRUCE

AND RUSSELL STILL CONSIDER THEMSELVES AT

THE BOTTOM OF THE LEARNING CURVE.

much more at stake on the initial punt. You can possibly afford to lose $50,000 on a record, butyou can’t make a movie for that. The pressure to deliver good work is stimulating.”

The combination of their equipment and engineering talent seems to be appreciated. They mixed the music for Crocodile Dundee at the studio and, after supplying the final tracks, they received a letter from the film’s American music editor saying, “Whatever you got goin’, don’t change it.” A lot o f people have commented on the wide stereo image on Dundee as being very noticeable in the theatre.

SPROCKETS? WHAT SPROCKETS?Gently advancing, they did another feature where the voice-overs, music and mix have all been done under the one roof. It was the sci fi/ music/horror feature, Sons O f Steel. The film’s director, Gary Keady, enjoyed working in an environment familiar to his music background. There is still some scepticism about mixing to video but on the whole the Americans have embraced the idea, Bruce believes. “There is a producer coming out to do a series who wants to work that way, re­alizing that it’s cheaper and faster. It saves the director driving some­where to check the music and then driving somewhere else to then hear the effects laid up. He can walk around here and keep his eye on it.” And it seems to help improve the liaison between the departments.

Russell admits that there is a lot o f irrational resistance to the move to mixing to video, going digital and not using sprocketed magnetic tracks. “There’s a bit o f the Boogeyman about it all, like when digital came in and people said, ‘I can hear the top end squaring off.’ And in some instances you could, but the new range o f equipment is so good you can’t hear it. And you only have to listen to some old analogue stuff to find it sounds like listening through thirty feet o f water. The digital clarity is unmistakable, if that’s what you’re after. A lot o f people say they like tape compression, and I don’t mind it either... on drum kits! ”

Russell agrees that, “A lot o f people are sceptical, until they sit down and see what we’ve done ... and how rapidly. They seem impressed.

“The other thing they comment on is the avoidance o f all the dubbing o f the sprockets, and being able to keep it all contained in a

A - P E R ' S 7 55 0 C

digital format. It is also an advantage to have a minimal amount of people working on their job, instead o f the usual cast o f thousands working in the sound department. I get stories from blokes that have had to mix in the normal type set-ups where they get it down to as few tracks as they can and yet there is still some mystical aura about the guy who shoves up and down the eight knobs.”

I asked if they thought it was just mystique applied to the need to mix in a large theatre environment. Russell answered, “A lot o f people think that unless you have a big theatre you’ll lose some o f that perspective, and they could be right, but if the audio end o f the mix is inferior, then you lose what you might pick up. And most of the set­ups in theatres are pretty antiquated anyway.”

The process they have followed to make sure that their tracks work in theatres also shows the strange mix o f expertise and enthusiasm.

Ted Albert, ‘the boss’ and owner of the studio, has a theatre under­neath his house. It has 35mm CinemaScope, with one of the pioneer multi-track film audio devices, a discrete four-track magnetic unit. He also has prints o f significant movies like Around the World in 80 Days. Bruce describes the big theatre as about the same size as Colorfilm’s mixing theatre and they used to try out their first mixes in it. But their main experience came “when initially we played videos that have all the encoded material on them and copied the sound. We found movies that had soundtracks we liked and tried to match how they had done them.”

ANALOGUE TO DIGITALAlthough they have always had Fairlights in the music studios, about a year ago they bought a Series III Fairlight CMI that they found worked well as a sound effect track laying device. It also fitted well into the overall move o f the studios towards being fully digital, and it gave them the idea that the facility might be attractive for film people. Having already had experience with sound and picture interlock with commercials, they believed by using video “we didn’t need sprockets. ” When Russell and Bruce mentioned getting a Dolby or UltraStereo encoder unit, Ted Albert agreed. They purchased a Sony video projector and put a rear-projection screen over the window into the main studio. With an UltraStereo unit, they then had the ability to

provide full surround sound.“The UltraStereo”, Russell explains, “is a Dolby pinch except you

can buy it. It encodes in one signal the four final tracks o f the mix. Mainly music/ dialogue comes from the centre, then there is centre left and centre right which are used for panning sound. You never get a true stereo image on anything, although it can go from one side of the screen to the other, and at the threshold o f the mix it throws the sound to the rear speaker. That’s when the chopper goes roaring over your

head.“It’s pretty controllable, but there are times when the encoder

goes haywire, as when it’s writing it down, and suddenly the rear speakers burst into life and everything’s pouring out the back.” He laughed about “the few frightening moments until you get it set properly” .

There is some rivalry between manufacturers o f the surround sound system and quite a few recent movies have had UltraStereo mentioned in the credits rather than the familiar Dolby logo. Although Dolby Labs did the early work in designing the system, they lease the units per project and will not sell them.

UltraStereo started in California making units to compete with the Dolby CP50 decoders in theatres, and through their success began to make encoders. Russell explains that theirs is a modified theatre playback system “that fits into a road case and works very well. When we got it I fed tones and pink noise into the different channels and just kept it going round in circles. When I took it to Colorfilm I could see they were impressed by the lack o f bleed from front to back and between left and right. I don’t know if it’s better than the Dolby, but it seemed to be completely compatible. And it saves the five to six thousand dollar licence fee for Dolby, which is probably not a big part o f the budget, but it means the producer can spend it elsewhere.

“I don’t know how they got around the Dolby patents, but the local Dolby agent was going to leave his DS4 unit in here until his London office heard that we had the UltraStereo and they pulled it out.”

THE HARDWAREThe desk is a 56 channel SSL standard console that they are having modified to match the one at Lucasfilm for which SSL has designed a special panning system for the surround sound. With the modification, switching it to quad automatically switches all the buses to the correct channels. The output is to one or more of their four Sony PCM 3324 Digital multi-track tape recorders, machines that are building a big following in the industry.

“They’re excellent”, Russell believes, “but film people say, ‘What if you want to slip something a few frames?’ Or they want to add or

chop something. ‘What do you do without sprockets?’, they ask. That happened quite a few times with the last film and it is just a simple matter. We can lock any number o f the Sony tape machines together via their own CTL (control) track, and, when it is synchronized to the picture, transfer all the sound to a new 24 track tape with the new sequences added or re­moved.” This can be done any number o f times without los­ing quality on successive gen­erations because of the digital format.

Bruce explained the final part of the process. “We trans­fer the encoded tracks onto a U-matic PCM. Because the 24 track Sony Digital machines are basically video machines, you can put video colour black onto them and they can be phase-locked to the video machine. We cart the machine

over to Colorfilm and they feed a Pilotone 50hz signal from a Nagra into the U-matic video input. You hear the U-matic slew and it phase locks, and then they transfer it to mag. You can actually go direct to the neg if you are confident, but they usually like to run it as a double head to check that the transfer is correct.”

There was a hint in his voice that there was some resistance to change when he said, “I ’m sure that there was more than a little suspicion about these rock and rollers being able to get it right.”

THE 56 CHANNEL SSL STANDARD CONSOLE MODIFIED FOR SURROUND SOUND.

c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 51

SONS OF STEELWith such a big equipment investment, I asked if they believed that the savings in time made the costs comparable to conventional methods. Bruce offered their work on Sons o f Steel as an example. “The final mix on Sons o f Steel came from one twenty-four track, and we did the it in about four days because of the pre­mixes. We had actually mixed it once before when they wanted to take it to last year’s Cannes Festival. They rushed in and said,‘Let’s mix it now.’ That was just mayhem because we had two twenty-four tracks run­ning and I just put the limiter on the end and said, ‘Here we go.’ After Cannes, they came back and we then did it properly.

“As an afterthought, they said that they wanted stereo for the overseas market. They took only three hours to do, because you put the reels up and turn the automation on with the dialogue switched out and just let it run.I ’m sure that would have been a bigger drama with film reels.”

“Sons o f Steel had pop music tracks as well as scored, mainly synthesizer, music. As well there were four sound effects tracks, some incidental stuff and the dialogue tracks. These were all grouped so that you only had to control about four faders, rather than having a monstrous console with four men hanging on it. With automation it is all so controllable, and by only one person. It seems strange to me that so many o f the mixing set-ups, even many in the States, don’t use automation on their desks. It seems so old world.”

DIGITAL, TOTALLY DIGITALThe time soon came on the production when they moved even further towards the digital. Bruce had begun doing the dialogue replacement with a multi-track synchronized to the video, and quickly discovered that the process ‘gave him the horrors’. All synchronizers take some time to lock up and the delay between takes throws the actors’ timing off. Bruce’s solution was to get a totally digital sampling recorder called AudioFile. Instead of two tape machines having to stabilize, the AudioFile tracks the video constantly.

To use it, Bruce explains, “You just run the video a few times for the actor and then spool the video back a few seconds before the line and run it. The AudioFile will save as many takes as you like and its samples are all time-code related. Before the actor left I ’d sit down and edit them all together, stringing the best ones into one complete scene. We maybe had to go back and record something that wasn’t what we wanted or if the sync was a bit out. Usually you would just slip individual words and then lock it up and dump it onto the multi-track.

“Most o f the actors in SonsofSteelwc re amateur but the profession­als that we used were just knocked out by the speed o f working that way. While it was hot in their minds they were back at it. I can remember standing once in a big theatre watching post syncing being done to film and thinking how laborious it was. We did stuff where the actor was in and out in half an hour because you could say, ‘That was right but you were just a bit early on the whole delivery’, and quickly slip just that bit into sync.

“We were just about to buy an AudioFile, but they were in the order of $150,000, so we said hang-on, let’s see how the movie thing goes and I ’m glad we did. Now there are about five other manufactur­ers of audio ‘work stations’ as they’re called, all with different software approaches but basically doing the same job. I ’ve kept track o f them and when Fairlight said that they were doing a direct-to-disk version, we bought all the hardware for it although we knew that the software needed some work. It cost about $40,000 to upgrade and then they went bankrupt!”

Kym Ryrie and Peter Vogal have managed to resurrect Fairlight, and Bruce, like a lot o f other musicians, is glad to hear that they are back. The disk-based post-production system is slated for release at the October AES Show.

“All these manufacturers are pushing them for sound effects. But

5 2 C I N E M A P

there are differences between a sampled sound like the Fairlight, which is in BAM, and a direct-to-disk recording where you can’t manipulate the disk recording. They can do a few things like fade, and as the SSL has six tracks you can do a bit o f a mix. With the sound effects as samples in RAM on the Fairlight, they can be fired off at any point. And you also have all the power o f the ma­nipulation. Pitch change, bends on them, and edit them. Russell used it to do footsteps by sampling three or four footsteps, putting them in RAM, copying them and then lay all the steps up in sync, with changes in their pitch and levels. That’s something that the disk- based recording machines can’t do.”

When the studios were busy and Bruce needed to cut dialogue, he used to put the AudioFile in the boot o f his car and take it home on the weekend. He said, “I ’d sit there with headphones on and actually edit the dialogue and replacement dialogue sequences together, even sampling a bit o f ambient sound and laying it up with the new bits. Most times you don’t need to see picture because you know it’s in sync. IhadaBetam axVCRto watch it and the AudioFile just reads code and

fires off at the right points. It saves all that laborious splitting up of dialogue tracks on magnetic into separate reels and laying up ambient sound in the gaps. Often the scenes will be replaced later and all you are doing is providing a reference. O f course, on film it’s pretty cheap to have a couple o f spools and an Auratone speaker. We are using equipment that costs a couple o f hundred grand, but I believe that we do it so much quicker, and only split things when it’s necessary.”

FACING THE MUSICBruce knows that it is difficult for people to get the feel o f the theatre, even when they are mixing in a room that they were happy to use for music. He also tells o f some of the mistakes they made at first, by treating the mix like a music session where they would wind up the volume for the bits they liked and then had trouble finding levels. I commented that that seemed to be a common approach to musicians even producing music tracks for TV commercials.

“The fact that Gary Ready also came from a music background meant that we were all in it, so that when a song came on we had it loud and then when the dialogue came in it was dropped back. The first mix we rushed to get the film to Cannes, we didn’t see it until there was a print done and it was gone. (Gary was waiting at Colorfilm at six o’clock for the print and was on a plane an hour later with the reels under his arm.)

“When we heard it later we cracked up, a half dozen o f us went to a cinema out at Hornsby and there was the six o f us sitting in the middle o f the theatre. In the scene where they went into the cave where the monster was, we suddenly had all this water noise coming out o f the surround speaker that was so loud that you couldn’t hear the dialogue! But we’ve learnt a lot.”

And they are both still optimistic about the future. Bruce believes that, “Our record industry is no different to our movie industry. We are going along in a similar vein and, just as our records have started to take off overseas, so will our movies on a more regular basis. Australians can make a dollar go a lot further than other people. We have to get the result.

“We’ve just signed for another film that’s got a pretty good budget and an American pre-sale. We’ve sat down with the sound recordist to work out what equipment’s compatible and what we can pitch in to make it all work better on-site. Again, it’s the difference between the young guys on the way up and those who have been around for years. For those experts, I would never presume to tell them how to do it, but in the end, if we can make the recordist’s work sound better, we all look good. And digital is the way to go. I think that having the ability o f keeping it alive to the last second is pretty exciting. a

A P E R S 7 5

"THE FINAL MIX ON SONS OF STBBL CAME

FROM ONE TWENTY-FOUR TRACK, AND WE

DID IT IN ABOUT FOUR DAYS BECAUSE OF THE

PRE-MIXES. WE HAD ACTUALLY MIXED IT ONCE

BEFORE WHEN THEY WANTED TO TAKE IT TO

LAST YEAR'S CANNES FESTIVAL... THAT WAS

JUST MAYHEM BECAUSE WE HAD TWO

TWENTY-FOUR TRACKS RUNNING AND I JUST

PUT THE LIMITER ON THE END AND SAID,

'HERE WE GO .' AFTER CANNES, THEY CAME

BACK AND WE THEN DID IT PROPERLY."

- BRUCE BROWN

^ C A M E R A E Q U I P M E N T ^

• New Perspex Underwater Housing for Arri II

NDERW ATER CAMERA HOUSINGS available for rental are not common as most cinematographers who specialize in this work have their own custom-

made gear. Locally, I only know of the A1 Giddings housing that was made for The Deep, which only takes an Arri IIC and you have to nominate Panavision spherical or anamorphic lenses. Samuelsons has a number o f fibreglass cases that have been built with Sammies by local camera people. Most o f these are for the ARRI III but are limited to 200 ft magazines. Speed changes also require the camera to come out of the housing and they use the fighter and shorter-life Arri SR batteries. There are some metal casings that allow you to go down to about eight feet, but they seem very clumsy.

Ian Jones, Melbourne Steadicam operator and cameraman, be­lieved that there was an area for developing a commercially acceptable housing that overcame these limitations. The result can be judged from the photos and from its use on Trouble In Paradise and The Hunting.

Ian explained that he wanted to have a video split available. “That caused some problems because I liked the idea of the orientable viewfinder used at 45 degrees instead o f having an eyepiece at the rear of the housing. Working that way means you are tucked in closer to the camera, which gives you more control.”

The answer came about six months ago in the new video split that works with the orientable door, and, with the assistance of Camera- quip, Ian was able to include this in the final construction. “Samuel­sons has helped me a lot”, Ian said, “as the camera is capable of taking the C series anamorphic lenses from 30mm to 100mm. They used E series lenses on The H unting and they fitted in” .

Ian felt that Boulevard Films appreciated the video split ability. “Because it was a main unit shoot, I was set up in the pool and they could come across, put their people in the pool, shoot it and walk away. The director and DOP didn’t have to get into the water, which often is the only way to get a feel for it. They could look at the monitor and

say, ‘Fine’, and just call for a pan left or right.”Being able to change the speed control on the Arri III required the

ability to move the small knurled knob under the camera. Instead, Ian opted for the electronic speed control but didn’t want to put it underneath as the camera with 400 ft magazine in place already sat up quite high. Any modifications to the device would have taken away its instant compatibility. Ian was on a shoot in the U.S. “when I went to Burns and Sawyer and they had a second-hand variable-speed control unit. It was only crystal at 24 and 25 frames, but for the purpose it was fine. It had a long accessible shaft that we incorporated into the design and it will push the new Arri Ills to 125 fps.”

The weight and displacement was also carefully worked out. “There is no use”, Ian explained, “in having a housing that when the camera is added will sink to the bottom. It has turned out to need about two to three pounds o f extra weight to hold it down, and that’s with an anamorphic, two batteries and the variable speed. Each time you change lenses you have to make some adjustment, and I like it to be slightly negatively buoyant.”

There are expensive video connectors available for underwater but Ian was sceptical of fitting something solid to the housing that was to be continually plugged and removed. They came up with the alterna­tive of putting a port in the side with an O-ring and physically running the cable through this with the O-rings and brass fittings. “When you use the cable you put the port on and clamp it, and run the cable up to the surface. There is a dummy port if you don’t need the split. The option we are developing is for the operator to also use a video monitor as a viewfinder.”

As well as all that, it is made to sit on the tripod, has follow focus and iris adjustment, and takes a 9.8 mm Kinoptic lens, which, Ian says, looks terrific and believes is unique in the housings available in Australia.

The housing is available through Ian Jones, pictured below with the said piece o f equipment. ■

c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 53

AlbertDigital

Multi-track Recording Facilities Featuring Sony 24 track digita Irecording

in all studiosSpecialising in post synch film production

and ultra-stereo surround dolby mixing for theatre

Fairlight CMI Series III

9 Rangers Road Neutral Bay NSW 2089

Business Hours: (02) 909 3111

After Hours:Studio One: (02) 909 3151 Studio Two: (02) 909 3887

Studio Three: (02) 909 3620 Studio Four: (02) 909 3609

Fax (02) 909 3035

35mmUnderwater?No Problem

ULTRA-LIGHT AND COMPACT UNDERWATER HOUSINGS FOR 35MM — SPHERICAL AND ANAMORPHIC

BUCKlMGHAtfPICTURE

PRODUCTIOM5

CONTACT ROGER BUCKINGHAM TELEPHONE (02) 918 8741

THE GEOLOGICAL AND MINING MUSEUM

(INCORPORATING THE MINERALS & ENERGY INFORMATION CENTRE)

CAMPBELLS COVET H E R O C K S, SYD N EY

The “Mining Museum” in The Rocks area is under­going a major refurbishment, both o f its historic home and of the exhibitions to be presented.. The project is a jo int venture of the NSW Department of Minerals and Energy and the private sector.The new “Mining Museum ” with its interactive three- dimensional and realistic exhibits will be dynamic and exciting. It is aimed to make the Museum an educational centre and a showcase for our wealth of Mining Exhibits, as well as appealing to a broad range of visitors of all ages.

AUDIO VISUAL D IR EC TO R /PR O D U C ER

The Museum invites expressions of interest from prospective Director/Producers who could provide consulting and technical services:• Skilled in the direction and production of AV material• Co-ordinate and supervise the production of animated shorts / video

footage / computer graphics from script development and edit through to 1" master tapes

• Be able to work closely with, and contribute to, an existing team of researchers, curators, designers and audio, lighting and photographic specialists• Experience in the development and creation of lively educational A V material would be an advantage

• Experience with hard disk/card storage of data would also be advantageous

MORE INFORMATION AND WRITTEN APPLICATION SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO: MS JENNI LUCOCK

GIBBON HAMER & ASSOCIATES PROJECT MANAGERS

1 LEE STREET, SYDNEY, NSW 2000 TELEPHONE (02) 211 3122 FACSIMILE (02) 281 2434

Film M ake-uplechndogy(WHOLESALERS & IMPORTERS)

TOTAL TUITION IN FILM, TELEVISION AND SPECIAL EFFECTS MAKE-UP

Specially designed for those who wish to work professionally in the Film and T.V. industry.

This course includes high fashion for photography, cover girl, straight corrective for studio lighting, character make-up, old age stippling scars, burns, facial deformities, bald cap-making, classical period and various racial make-ups.

43-47 Trafalgar Street,ANN ANDALE

Phone 519 7049

54 c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

EDENS LOST

T VS C A N N E R S

T V SCANNERS W ILL APPEAR IN EVERY SECOND ISSUE OF CINEMA

PAPERS. T V CRITICS WERE GIVEN NINE PROGRAMS TO RATE BETWEEN

0 - 10 (10 BEING THE OPTIM UM RATING) AND THEY COULD ADD­

ITIO N A LLY NOM INATE AND RATE A TITLE OF THEIR O W N CHOICE. THE

CRITICS ARE: PAMELA CASELLAS (THE WEST AUSTRALIAN), BRIAN

COURTIS (MELBOURNE HERALD), MIKE HARRIS (THE BULLETIN), BAR­

BARA HOOKS (THE AGE), KAREN LATEO (THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH),

ROBIN OLIVER (SYDNEY M ORNING HERALD), DENNIS PRYOR (THE

AGE), KEVIN SADLIER (THE SUN-HERALD), GERRI SUTTON (DAILY MIR-

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

Pamela Casellas 6Brian Courtis 6Mike Harris 4Barbara Hooks 6Karen Lateo 5Robin Oliver 5Dennis Pryor 4Kevin Sadlier 7Gerri Sutton 6Paul Wicks 7

E STREET

Pamela Casellas 5Brian Courtis 5Mike Harris 8Barbara Hooks 3Karen Lateo 3Robin Oliver 3Dennis Pryor 4Kevin Sadlier 6Gerri Sutton 7Paul Wicks 4

CHINA BEACH

Pamela Casellas 7Brian Courtis 7Mike Harris 7Barbara Hooks 7Karen Lateo 6Robin Oliver 6Dennis Pryor 5Kevin Sadlier 7Gerri Sutton 7Paul Wicks 8

THIRTYSOMETHING

Pamela CasellasBrian Courtis 8Mike Harris 8Barbara Hooks 8Karen Lateo 5Robin Oliver 1Dennis Pryor 6Kevin Sadlier 7Gerri Sutton -

Paul Wicks

THE POWER THE PASSION

6

Pamela Casellas 1Brian Courtis 1Mike Harris 3Barbara Hooks 2Karen Lateo 6Robin Oliver 4Dennis Pryor 6Kevin Sadlier 2Gerri Sutton 2Paul Wicks 1

Pamela Casellas 8Brian Courtis 8Mike Harris 2Barbara Hooks 5Karen Lateo 8Robin Oliver 9Dennis PryorKevin Sadlier 5Gerri Sutton 8Paul Wicks 7

PREJUDICE

Pamela Casellas Brian CourtisMike Harris 5Barbara Hooks 9Karen Lateo 7Robin Oliver Dennis PryorKevin Sadlier 6Gerri Sutton 6Paul Wicks 8

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Pamela Casellas 6Brian Courtis 5Mike Harris 5Barbara Hooks 2Karen Lateo 5Robin Oliver 4Dennis Pryor 3Kevin Sadlier 7Gerri Sutton 5Paul Wicks 4

RESCUE

Pamela Casellas 8Brian Courtis 7Mike Harris 5Barbara Hooks 4Karen Lateo 6Robin Oliver 2Dennis PryorKevin Sadlier 8Gerri Sutton 7Paul Wicks 7

CRITICS' CHOICE

Pamela Casellas, Jack The Ripper - 9; Brian Courtis, The Big Gig - 8; Mike Harris, Wiseguy - 3; Karen Lateo, Roseanne - 7;Robin Oliver, Blind Justice - 8; Dennis Pryor, Blind Justice - 8; Kevin Sadlier, Jack The Ripper - 8; Gerri Sutton, First Born - 8.

ROR), AND PAUL WICKS (THE COURIER MAIL).

C H I N A B E A C H A V E R A G E R A T I N G 6 7

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 5 5

THIS ISSUE: SWEETIE, DEAD POETS SOCIETY,

BONZA, LOVER BOY, BATMAN, GEORGIA AND

NEW YORK STORIES

ABOVE:

KAY (KAREN COLSON):

ETHEREALITY AND SUBLIMATED

DESIRES, IN JANE CAMPION'S UN­

COMMONLY HAUNTING

SW EETIE.

5 6

SWEETIEA N N E - M A R I E C R A W F O R D

A N D A D R I A N M A R T I N

JANE CAMPION’S Sweetie is an uncom­monly haunting Australian feature film. It

takes more interesting risks, more consistently, than virtually any other Australian feature o f recent memory, even independent-minded ones like Tender Hooks or Mull. Doubdess, what makes it interesting to us is what will damn it in the eyes o f some others: a certain all-pervading tone and quality o f irresolution, indefinition, uncertainty. It ’s a: film that in­deed (to use the precious parlance o f opinion- mongers) ‘doesn’t work’, doesn’t hold to­gether. It ’s the opposite o f the ‘organic’ film, a work in which style, theme and narrative mutually support and express each other. Sweetie forever multiplies its themes, and drifts in such a way that it constandy displaces its centre o f interest. Thus, the film steadfastiy resists that brutal condensation, casually per­formed by reviewers and eamesdy recom-

c i

mended by scriptwriting manuals, down into a single, simple, three-sentence ‘narrative image’ or statement o f thematic intent.

Campion’s own comments on what the film is ‘about’, in interviews and elsewhere, are in fact as numerous and diffuse as they are curi­ous. But perhaps one o f her remarks provides a general, ‘spiritual’ orientation: “I... felt in­tuitively that I wanted to do something modern... something about the Eighties” ( Cinem a Papers, May 1989). As in the works o f a recent generation o f Americans - Jar­musch, Wang, Cox, Lynch - what seems to matter most to Campion is the successful evocation o f a certain contemporary sensibil­ity, a particular tone, relating to, the ‘feel’ of modem life, how individuals perceive it in affective terms. I f this sensibility risks courting a fragmentation and wayward drifting at the very heart o f the film and its construction, then so be it: how else to portray a world defined, at a fundamentally banal and every­day level, by alienation, irresolution and inco­hesion?

N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

Sweetie focuses, in a great Australian tradi­tion, on the lives o f ‘ordinary’ people, whilst (thankfully) managing to avoid the canonical film-school approach o f ‘suburban grotesque’, with its petty, satirical tone o f moral superior­ity. It quizzically weighs up deep, subterra­nean human (and mystical) impulses against determinedly uneventful surface interactions and outcomes. There is, amidst the banality, a giddy sense o f semi-hallucination, as if the characters are asking themselves, somewhere inside: Is this really happening to me? More­over, it is as if the significance o f any single event may well be lost on the characters them­selves - for this is a world in which ‘meaning’ holds little sway, in which a search for meaning could never really pay off.

Thus Sweetie poses delicate problems for audiences or critics who would fixate on its array o f ‘themes’, its coagulated meanings. The film suggests a system of perception which involves an interest in age old, universally human questions, but in a way that is not absolute, still open to relativity, chance, ab­surdity. The themes are many - but they neither explain the film (and its emotional effect) satisfactorily, nor do they form a par­ticularly cohesive, articulated pattern in them­selves.

The film is, from one angle, about women and female sexuality. Sweetie clearly divides the world o f women from the world o f men. It is the women - Kay (Karen Colston), Flo (Dorothy Barry) and Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon) - who invariably get things moving, who take action and force change, while the men - principally Louis (Tom Lycos) and Gordon (Jon Darling) - accordingly let them­selves be passively moved around. On a deeper level, the film suggests two dialectically op­posed feminine archetypes - the witch-like Kay, with her secrets and superstitions, her ethereality and sublimated desires, contrast­ing starkly with the brute force o f Sweetie’s obstinate and unrelenting libido, her absolute dependence on male love.

From another angle, the film is a ‘comedy o f remarriage’. This term has recently been used to encompass all those stories that deal with the human problem o f whether couples (not necessarily married in the legal sense) can rekindle a deep, binding love that has gone somewhat cold or awry after the first flames o f passion and/or commitment. There are two ‘remarriages’ at stake in Sweetie - Kay and Louis’s, Gordon and Flo’s. From this inter­pretative point of view, Sweetie’s character function is to be the catalyst - if not the sacrific ia l scapegoat - that enables these couples to renegotiate their relationship; she is the ‘carnivalesque’ figure who turns the normal world upside down in order that it possibly be renewed, re-evaluated. Interestingly, Sweetie is here not so much an eternal feminine force, as a traditionally masculine mythological one - the angel/devil figure, like Terence Stamp in Pasolini’s Teorema or Sting in Brimstone and Treacle, who exits from the tale as mysteri­ously and abruptly as he/she entered it, hav­ing wreaked an ambiguous destruction. The end-point o f ‘remarriage’ in Campion’s film is

extremely tentative and fragile, once again haunted by ambiguity, as is Sweetie’s final transcendental affirmation: “Love me with all o f your heart...” .

Sweetie is also about family life. This level of meaning is more ‘grounded’ and thus less allegorical or mythological than the others. The film has much to do with the cluttering emotional ‘baggage’ that people carry around in their everyday lives. It suggests the inescap­able hell o f family life, and the painful inevita­bility o f children mirroring the complexes of their parents. Sweetie, in this structure, has another set of functions. She is the one who has been most irremediably screwed up by this particular nuclear family - complete with a suggested father-daughter incest dependency. But paradoxically, as one who is experienced by the other characters as more burden than victim, it is her death which allows a sense of release, or momentary relief, from the hell of family life.

The film has a very special plot structure which encourages the ‘drifting’ o f any inter­pretation. Owing something, perhaps, to the loose ‘road movie’ structures of the 1970s, Sweetie deliberately possesses no narrative centre, no single, motivating, driving force. The film plumbs the ‘aleatory’ idea that both life and narrative are (or should be) at the mercy of sudden moves and interruptions that inaugurate unexpected trajectories: someone knocks on the door and moves in for good; a phone call from interstate prompts an un­planned journey/holiday. Doubtless discon­certingly to some tastes, the film lurches through a series of large-scale displacements, and every new ‘move’ seems to relocate the­matic possibilities. (Perhaps only the bizarre ‘outback’ section of the film is too elliptical and hallucinatory to be accommodated in any reading!) More than most films, Sweetie tanta­lizes one with the question of ‘where it’s coming from’.

The style of Sweetie, particularly its visual style, is in many respects a level unto itself- a perpetual, floating, quasi-autonomous ‘event’ like everything else in the film. Here, Campion reaches the height o f her experimental risk taking: for no comparable Australian feature has had the same courage to so utterly jettison the conventions o f a ‘classical’ or mainstream shooting style. Campion’s pictorial style is already unmistakeable, perhaps even rigidly so: the eye-popping, static compositions which place a close-up head in one corner, while some weirdly angled expanse o f space fills the rest of the frame; the bright, minimal, hard- edge colour configurations; the dappling o f a few fragile beams or speckles o f light in a dark interior.

This choice of style is risky because it forfeits so much in ‘classical’ terms: in ‘atomizing’ each character, each shot, each scene into separated little blocks or cells, it effectively rules out the possibilities o f a ‘flowing’ mise- en-scene, dramatic moments that carefully swell up and die away, and ensemble acting. There is also, perhaps unfortunately, an aes­thetic reduction that is inherent in Campion’s visual style, which has an undoubted dramatic

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

effect, but is rather flatly laid on, lacking in modulation or complexity. What the overall style achieves, however, is certainly rewarding: strange, modern rhythms; a truly unusual tone; and an irregular flow which is both pleasingly calm and even, but full o f tiny moment-to-moment surprises. Amidst all o f this, there is a hushed, often silent, mysterious soundtrack, where elements such as the a cappella songs come to play an ambiguous, shifting role: perhaps an ironic commentary on events, perhaps expressive of deep yearnings, perhaps just an odd textural, affective touch.

Tellingly, Sweetie has failed to be nominated in either ‘Best Screenplay’ or ‘Best Direction’ categories in this year’s AFI Awards. It thus joins the line o f very interesting low-budget features that have attracted general disap­proval or indifference from the mainstream of our beloved ‘industry’. Yet it is precisely be­cause these maligned films contradict the industry’s mediocre norms - the liberal no­tions of worthy content, the hopelessly insuf­ficient understandings o f classical form - that they should be highly prized. In a very modest sense these films are ground breaking. The flat and homogenous landscape of Australian cinema is disturbed by their incongruous presence. We might cautiously hope that this growing body of films, whose only common creed is heterogeneity and difference, might generate some movement in the dried-up mainstream.s w e e t i e : Directed by Jane Campion. Producer: John Maynard. Screenplay: Jane Campion, Gerard Lee. Director of photography: Sally Bongers. Edi­tor: Veronica Heussler. Production designer: Peter Harris. Music: Martin Armiger. Sound: Leo Sulli­van. Cast: Genevieve Lemon (Dawn/Sweetie), Karen Colston (Kay), Tom Lycos (Louis), Jon Darling (Gordon), Dorothy Barry (Flo), Michael Lake (Bob), Andre Pataczek (Clayton). Produc­tion company: Arena. Distributor: Filmpac. 35 mm. 97 mins. Australia. 1989.

DEAD POETS SOCIETYB R I A N M c F A R L A N E

THERE IS a LONG and honourable tradi­tion of films about the life-enhancing eff­

ect of dedicated teachers, stretching back at least 50 years to Goodbye Mr. Chips ( 1939) and surfacing as recently as Stand and Deliver (1988). Peter Weir’s new film, D ead Poets Society, awakes echoes o f many such films, as well o f others such as Lindsay Anderson’s If... (1968), Larry Peerce’s A Separate Peace (1973) and Weir’s own Picnic a t Hanging Rock (1974) which call into question a whole oppressive system of education. D ead Poets Society is a film with a rich intertextuality: as well as the films and genres already referred to, it includes Weir’s Gallipoli, another study o f young lives thwarted and harmed in the process of their being opened up, and Robert Cormier’s threat­ening novels o f teenagers in conflict with the key institutions of their lives, not to mention Dickens’ H ard Times.

My point in invoking these other names is not to suggest that D ead Poets Society lacks a distinctive flavour but that it is texturally enriched by the resonances it sets up. In

5 7

CHARLIE (GALE HANSEN)

PLAYS THE SAXOPHONE AT A SECRET

MEETING OF THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY.

PETER WEIR'S DEAD POETS SOCIETY.

relation to Weir’s own films, there are clear elements o f continuity: the romantic and sexual burgeoning at odds with the institutional pressures o f the college in Picnic, the pain of innocence betrayed in Gallipoli, in thematic terms; the counterpointing o f visual and aural beauty with the threat of events in both and in Witness. Ravishingly lit by John Seale, Weir’s most frequent cinematographer, the beauty of the fall shading into winter in D elaware (stand­ing in for Vermont) takes the breath away. But it is not merely beautiful, not merely pictorial: it is part o f the film’s drama that it should look as it does, for it provides a powerful contrast with the regime associated with Welton Acad­emy where whatever is natural is in the process o f being repressed. The image of the boy Todd (Ethan Hawke) vomiting in the snow encapsulates the opposition at the film’s heart; so too do those shots o f flights o f birds in graceful ascent, reinforcing our sense o f the constricted lives the school wants to engen­der.

Where Appleyard College and Hanging Rock signified the two controlling principles at work in Picnic, in D ead Poets Society it is the Academy and the cave, the meeting place for the eponymous society, which symbolize the conflicting responses to life at the film’s heart. The banners which are borne into the opening assembly for the autumn term spell out the four watchwords o f Welton: tradition, hon­our, discipline and excellence: and, shortly afterwards, these are good-naturedly paro­died in the bedroom of one o f the boys. They are more seriously called into question by the arrival ofEnglish teacher, J ohn Keating (Robin Williams), a former Honours graduate of the Academy who carries the film’s notion that education should change lives. Change and enhance\ivts. Keating’s credo is: “ Carpe diem. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.”

Williams, more restrained than usual, proj­ects convincingly the inspired, charismatic image the role needs to account for Keating’s effect on the boys. He is entirely acceptable on a personal level, less so on the professional level. That is the fault of the writing (and Tom Schulman’s screenplay is often locally very sharp): the notions of life-enriching teaching is romantic but not necessarily false. However, it needs to be shown rather than merely as­serted. The glimpses we are given o f Keating’s classroom methods are enough to establish him as someone who might be able to teach literature. There is a vertiginous 360° shot of Keating’s attempts to get Todd to open up in class which tells us something about his psy­chological insight but there is nothing comp­arable to show how he might make a Shakespearean sonnet accessible to the class.

This quibble registered, it must be said that Keating and the idea o f the Dead Poets Soci­ety associated with him and its cave meeting- place work satisfactorily on a structural level.

That is, they stand clearly for one half o f the central narrative opposition: that ofliberating impulse to self-expression, on the one hand, and the deadly weight o f parental and school expectations on the other. About half-way through the film one begins to feel its points are being too easily made. The rest o f the Academy’s staff are either cynical or stiffly conventional, if not indeed sadistic like the principal (Norman Lloyd); the parents too eagerly acquiesce in the Academy’s cramming ideals; only Keating, the students’ friend, understands.

Then, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, the film’s tone deepens and darkens. When Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) tells Keat­ing that he has defied his father’s wishes and gone on with his performance o f Puck in A Midsummer Night’s D ream it seems briefly as if the conflict for Neil has been too easily solved, as if Keating’s influence has been too clearcut. The play is performed with touching youthfulness and seriousness, the boy’s father watches from the back of the theatre, and the outcome is family conflict wrought to tragic pitch.

In the last movement of the film following Neil’s death, what Weir (and Schulman) have done is to give melodrama its head in the most gratifying way. Weir has always seemed drawn by the possibilities o f melodrama (particularly in The T ear o f Living Dangerously) but he has never surrendered so whole-heartedly to its lure as he does here. As Academy and parents close ranks looking for a scapegoat, they settle on Keating and his dangerous libertarian val­ues and the film moves towards a powerfully moving climax.

This climax, which resists the more obvious heroicizing possibilities for Keating, makes exultantly clear the positive influence his cata­lytic presence has had on the boys. As they farewell him, the frame composition ensures their dwarfing o f the impotently bullying prin­cipal. It is one o f the great melodramatic endings o f recent years: not only does it pro­

vide a heightened and simplified upsurge of emotion when it is needed, but it insists that we engage with its moral judgments. There is nothing equivocal here. Guilt and innocence have separated themselves out for our scrutiny and our endorsement o f the film’s recognition o f their difference. Keating may be leaving Welton but through him some o f the boys have won an important battle and the film concludes on their announcement o f victory. Looking back over the film from this vantage point, one can forgive tendencies to dawdle and to over-simplify. The end, literally, justi­fies the means and one feels that nothing has been wasted, that everything feeds into that triumphantly confident final movement.

It’s not necessary to be a card-carrying au- teurist to be interested in the continuities and development ofW eir’s career as a director. By any criteria, he is one o f the most gifted filmmakers thrown up by the new Australian cinema. He has always had a strong visual sense; he has always been responsive to milieu, to atmosphere; and in D ead Poets Society he has strengthened his narrative grasp by trust­ing the impulse to melodrama. He has un­ashamedly sought to move and exhilarate his audience and - for at least one o f its number - has achieved his purpose.

d e a d p o e t s s o c i e t y Directed by PeterWeir. Produc­ers: Steven Haft, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas. Associate producer: Duncan Henderson. Screen­play: Tom Schulman. Director of photography: John Seale. Editor: William Anderson. Production designer: Wendy States. Music: Maurice Jarre. Production design: Wendy States. Cast: RobinWil- liams (John Keating), Robert Sean Leonard (Neil Perry), Ethan Hawke (Todd Anderson), Josh Charles (Knox Overstreet), Gale Hansen (Charlie Dalton), Dylan Kussman (Richard Cameron), Alle- lon Ruggiero (Steven Meeks), James Waterston (Gerard Pitts), Norman Lloyd (Mr Nolan) Kurt- wood Smith (Mr Perry), Carla Belver (Mrs Perry). Touchstone Pictures in association with Silver Screen Partners IV, in association with Witt-Thomas Pro­ductions. Distributor: Roadshow. 35m m .l28 mins. USA. 1989.

5 8 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

BONZA, LOVER BOYl y n M c D o n a l d

TWO NEW Australian films, David Swann’s Bonza, and Geoffrey Wright’s Lover Boy,

are vivid examples o f the essential difference between film and current TV drama.

Both films show simple Australian, but uni­versal, themes o f family, relationships and the agony of it all. With a lot o f subtle innovation, they are perceptive about absolutely normal and accepted social frameworks and behav­ioural rituals.

Bonza is a bizarre vision of family life seen through the eyes o f a dog. Its sharp humour viciously pierces the traditional unit with mother as houseslut (so torn she waltzes with the family dog after taking him on a dinner date), and dad as Nazi dictator (ordering his son to be a dentist). The son sings rock operas (to Bonza the dog crowned in thorns) and the sister tries to get her head together after returning from overseas (where she went to get her head together).

The symbolic death of Bonza draws the family together in war then peace around the grave; the narrative obnoxiously allowing Bonza to rise from the dead. The script reads like a joke and this director has sure control over his material as he explodes myths about human nature in a way that the whingeing concerns o f TV series or most pop clips never achieve.

Lover Boy is like a delicate chocolate with a soft centre. The yearning core o f it might have occurred anywhere, but North Altona, Aus­tralia, isn’t bad. This is an (ultimately) inap­propriate love relationship between a young boy and an older woman. The heat between Mick (Noah Taylor) and Sally (Gillian Jones) is in action from the beginning and never lets up. It ’s the painful impossibility o f such a perfectly understandable and perfectly real­ized liaison which makes fine drama.

Failing turning such an idea into a blue flick or an episode of Neighbours, the film requires deft directorial insights and skilled acting. The supporting cast never fails the leads here. The script puts the sex scenes first and the conse­quences build the pace thereafter. It is a charming recipe o f subplots that never spoil the flavour. Director Geoffrey Wright subtly explores scenes with dramatic angles and light­ing that, along with the art direction, always exude a sense of time, place and season, as well as narrative positioning.

In Lover Boy, as in Bonza, the concepts being explored are slight but the execution (of both) charge these with significance. Take something simple like a domestic scene in suburbia, a representative social situation, and bleed it for meaning. Lover Boy never sucks itself dry. Bonza strikes incessantly like an angry snake.

Where Bonzais sort o f retro-surrealism with a bit o f 1950s (or is it ’70s?) nostalgia and a good, sharp dose o f ’80s hit-me-with-the- raw-visual-truth, Lover Boy is poignandy re­flective in its seductive dissection of charac­ters’ feelings and the inevitability o f their situation.

The male /husband figures in Lover Boy and

Bonza fare very badly. It is no accident that these men are thick-set, heavy, dark and thick o f thought. The women are allowed some lyrical respite. These films are about the new way; no longer are children seen and only patronizingly heard. In Bonza, the son (played flamboyandy by Peter Rowsthorn) and his sister (Susie Dee) are the source o f destruction o f the great family he. In Lover Boy it is 59 minutes o f climax as a teenager braves the zone of adult love and sex with a woman three times his age.

Both films exploit the use of light(ing) and camera direction for atmosphere that speaks. In Bonza, our dog’s-eye-view o f the situation makes sure we react via the bizarre. In Lover Boy, we are invited to see what is going to happen before it does. Gillian Jones’ loving Madonna-whore Sally is always provocatively dressed and we wait for Mick’s reaction, as she does. In this film the love/sex scenes are indeed blue as are the fight scenes at the end. Like the son’s vile nightmare sequence in Bonza, there is a sense that the psychological is out of control, as when Mick approaches a night service station to beat his lover’s ex- husband. Mick’s death scene is then drawn out with drips o f rain, abstract sharp edges and half frames, and we don’t have to see to know

what will probably happen. Sally wakes and goes out to find her young lover, but misses his dying form in the dark and returns inside, allowing us to experience the simplest possible suspense which purely serves to recapture the tragedy of this tiny, fragile relationship. When Bonza dies after swallowing some o f mum’s pills (which her traumatized son has stolen for his own use), we’re moved (everything is still too bizarre to be crying), but, most impor­tant, from Bonza’s eye view from the coffin, and then from above, we are drawn to assess what we have learnt about the family until now.

Both Bonza and Lover Boy are tributes to what drama really is - the exploration of conflict. Neither fall into the trap o f thought­less resolution. Bonza uses traditional narra­tive as a source o f humour and powerful idiosyncrasy. Lover Boy feels no embarrass­ment about resting on gentle, spare, unso­phisticated human exchanges. And both films have used a camera like a weapon or an indige­nous tool instead of like a TV or tourist video flatpack, probing instead o f panning.,

Had these filmmakers exchanged their origi­nal material for each other’s, it is alarming to think how they may have flaunted their origi­nal styles. More please.

ABOVE: LOVERS MICK (NOAH TAYLOR) AND

SALLY (GILLIAN JONES) IN GEOFFREY WRIGHT'S LOVER BOY.

LEFT: BONZA IS THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION AT HER BIRTHDAY

PARTY. WITH FATHER (PETER GREENE) AND SON (PETER

ROWSTHORN) IN DAVID SWAN'S BONZA.

b o n z a Directed by David Swann. Producer: Debo­rah Hoare. Screenplay: David Swann. Director of photography: Leigh Parker. Editor: Ken Sallows. Production designer: Len Barratt. Sound recordist: Phillip Healey. Music: A1 Mullins, Paul McWaters. Cast: Peter Green (Ted), Maureen Edwards (Bev), Susie Dee (Katherine), Peter Rowsthorn (Terry). Production company: Bonza Productions. Dis­tributor: AFI. 16 mm. 27 mins. Australia. 1988.

l o v e r b o y Directed by Geoffrey Wright. Producer: Daniel Scharf. Screenplay: Geoffrey Wright. Direc­tor ofphotography: Michael Williams. Editor: Grant Fenn. Production designer: Judy Borland. Sound: Mark Tarpey. Music: Joh Clifford White. Cast: Noah Taylor (Mick), Gillian Jones (Sally), Ben Mendelsohn (Gaz), Daniel Pollock (Duck), Alice Garner (Rhonda), Peter Hosking (Lex), Beverley Gardiner (Mick’s mother). Production company: Seon Films. Distributor: AFI. 16 mm. 57 mins. Australia. 1989.

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 59

BATMANR O D B I S H O P

T HE 12-YEAR-OLD in front o f me in the Batm an queue is discussing the difference

between the Caped Crusader and Superman. “Batman’s rad!”, she declares without hesita­tion. “He’s got no special powers, he just uses regular stuff to waste The Joker.”

Nobody in this suburban Los Angeles queue is prepared to argue. After all, this Batm an fan is probably a local crack dealer with an AK47 hidden under her Madonna t-shirt. And, besides, she has a point.

Batman’s toys are hardly “regular stuff1, but they are, after all, just cars, aircraft, metal gadgets and trick wires. Superman has the supernatural powers, but keeps trying to make out he’s just a regular guy. Batman, on the other hand, is basically a regular guy trying to make out that he’s supernatural.

Perhaps because of this, Batman (Michael Keaton) suffers from angst. His Teutonic posturings and wistful gazes into the heavens signal a desire to transcend his own mortality. He is a Batman that is closer to the human heart, perhaps, and nearer the reality o f the human condition.

This view of Batman has drawn criticism. The complaints from Batman buffs about the casting o f the film have appeared everywhere from USA Today to The Wall Street Journal. Most believe Keaton contravenes the very idea o f Batman. Film critics have picked on The Joker’s trashing of Gotham City’s Art Gallery as “irresponsible filmmaking ... [that] ... may lead to copycat behaviour”. Some mothers and gays have joined forces in decry­ing the absence o f Robin - the mothers fearing kids would have nobody to identify with, and the gays because the film has been stripped of homoerotic content.

The film is, o f course, beyond such sectional criticism. The merchandising o f Batman para­phernalia alone is expected to nett more than $300 million. Trade magazines in the U.S.

have claimed a “100% awareness factor” for the film - theoretically every man, woman, child (and bat) in the U.S. was aware o f the film’s debut. After the first 14 days and a gross of $225 million, there seems little reason to doubt this claim.

More than a film, Batm an is an Event, an escapist fantasy effortlessly capitalizing on the Bat iconography embedded into the race memories o f anyone touched by American culture.

Gotham City is portrayed as a vast, expres­sionist urban jungle, its darkness broken only by pools of light, smoke and mist. Anton Furst’s design is influenced as much by F.W. Murnau as it is by Fritz Lang, the legacy of these German Expressionists evident in the understated, meticulously detailed produc­tion sets.

Batman’s nemesis is the gangster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), whose facial disfigurement turns him into The Joker, a maniac avenging himself on every living person in Gotham City.

Even Batman’s love interest, Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), is incidental to the escalating, head-to-head battle being fought in the streets and airspaces of Gotham by two men aspiring to the stature o f legends, or gods.

Michael Keaton plays Bruce Wayne as a vul­nerable neurotic, trapped in a world he re­gards as abnormal, even alien. As Batman, Keaton is a solitary introvert haunted by child­hood trauma. And in Batgear, he’s all jerks and stiff-necked poses, his mind tunnel-visioned in its quest to conquer all Evil.

As usual, Nicholson seems to have all the best fines. And he sets a new standard in ‘over- the-top’ performance; prancing, dancing, strut­ting and posing, his crazed dementia appar­ently fed by the Prince songs on his ghetto- blaster.

Even his kaleidoscopic clothes can’t detract from his finest moment: the gleeful desecra­tion of an art gallery. In the end, The Joker is just plain pissed the Bat has got better toys.

LEFT: BATMAN (MICHAEL KEATON) PROTECTS PHOTO­

JOURNALIST VICKI VALE (KIM BASINGER) AS HE FIGHTS

OFF THE JOKER'S GOONS IN GOTHAM CITY. TIM

BURTON'S BATMAN.

As narrative fantasy, Batm an has more than its fair share o f flaws to detract from its robust achievements: scenes where the action lacks credibility, or the character motivation is strik­ingly illogical, or the faults in the comic timing unnecessarily slacken the pace.

Tim Burton’s previous films, Beetlejuiceand Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, had similar prob­lems, but his direction is always good enough to regain control over the material.

Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren’s script is similarly uneven. The promises o f psychologi­cal expositions o f the characters are over­whelmed by the state-of-art set design and the pyrotechnic effects.

By the time Batm an reaches its Vertigo- inspired conclusion, it has lost much o f its initial drive, yet the residual effects o f its high points elicit respect and admiration from most o f its audience.

As homage it aims way too high, and is unable to match the standards set by similar films like Georges Franju’s Judex. But it takes risks and gambles, and that’s more than one can say for Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Ghostbusters I I or Star Trek V. Tim Burton shows a more daring and confident approach with his ambitious screen version o f the Caped Rodent, and for most o f Batm an his gamble pays off.

BATMAN Directed by Tim Burton. Producers: Jon Peters, Peter Guber. Executive producers: Benjamin Melniker, Michael Uslan. Co-producer: Chris Kenney. Screenplay: Sam Hamm, Warren Skaaren. From a story by Hamm, based on characters cre­ated by Bob Kane. Director of photography: Roger Pratt. Editor: Ray Lovejoy. Production designer: Anton Fürst. Supervising art direction: Les Tomkins. Music: Danny Elfman. Songs: Prince. Supervising sound editor: Don Sharpe. Cast: Michael Keaton (Batman), J ack Nicholson (J ack Napier/The J oker), Kim Basinger (Vicki Vale), Robert Wuhl (Alexan­der Knox), Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon), Billy Dee Williams (Harvey Dent), Michael Gough (Alfred), Jack Palance (Grissom), Jerry Hall (Al­icia), Lee Wallace (Mayor), Tracey Walter (Bob). Production company: Guber-Peters. Distributor: Roadshow. 35mm. 126 mins. USA. 1989.

GEORGIAP A U L K A L I N A

NYBODYWHO HAS ADMIRED the works o f writer and director Ben Lewin will, un­

doubtedly, be keen to see his first locally-made theatrical feature, Georgia, which Lewin dir­ected and co-scripted (with Joanna Murray- Smith and Bob Weis).

Lewin is probably best known for his work in television, in particular for the mini-series The Duner a Boys, an AB C tele-feature A Matter O f Convenience, three episodes o f The M i­

g ran t Experience and the serial Rafferty’s Rules, which he is credited for devising, as well as writing and directing a one-hour pilot. (His filmography also fists The Mexican Rebels, a “British cowboy film”, and The Case o f Cruelty

6 0 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

to Prawns, a comedy drama for Thames TV, winner o f a Silver Boomerang for best televi­sion film at the 1979 Melbourne Film Festi­val.)

A notable trademark of Lewin’s work is his ability to create colourful, quirky, unconven­tional characters, and to place narrative en­tirely at their service. With little more than a handful ofless-than-glamorous characters and the vivid backdrop o f St. Kilda, A M atter O f Convenience thrives on modest means as a rollicking, and fairly amoral modern romance. Even in The D unera Boys, based on an extraor­dinary event of World War II when a shipload of European Jews arrived in Australia but were mistaken as Germans, the broad historical canvas did not overshadow the characteriza­tions. With its cool and detached perspective, it satirized cherished notions o f nationalism, in the process pillorying the social and legal institutions the fledgling colony had inher­ited. In this way, the highly-principled but bureaucratically-constricted judge Michael Rafferty, the principal character of Rafferty’s Rules, gives further vent to these notions, the first few seasons of the show, it should be said, a finely-tuned ensemble piece.

These observations, however, are merely to illustrate the unexpected departure Lewin has made with Georgia. A mystery-cum-thriller, Georgia seems to be not only a strange match of talent to a project, but an uneasy marriage of disparate genres and influences, from Rashomon and Blow Up to any number of Hitchcock themes.

Nina Bailley (Judy Davis) is on the thresh­old of a challenging career as an investigating lawyer, when she moves into a new apartment - a fancy, New York-style loft overlooking Port Phillip Bay. On her first night there, she discovers a photograph of a woman holding to the camera a small baby. Later that night, an

BELOW: NINA (JUDY DAVIS) IS

ATTACKED BY THE STALKER IN HER APARTMENT.

BEN LEWIN'S GEORGIA.

invitation to a retrospective exhibition of photographs by Georgia White is slipped under her door.

Nina attends the exhibition, where she is intrigued by the photos on show: a murder victim slumped in a blood-splattered bath; a policeman, later identified as Le Mat (Marshall Napier), inspecting the scene; the infamously shady property developer and businessman Karlin (John Bach) trying to shield himself from the photographer; a brooding self-por­trait of the photographer.

Nina is confounded, however, when she recognizes her ‘mother’ (Elizabeth (Julia Blake) and Elizabeth’s lover Lazio (Alex Menglet) in these photos. After confronting Elizabeth, Nina learns that Georgia White was Nina’s mother. Some say Georgia committed suicide; others say she was pushed into the water and drowned.

Nina sets forth to investigate her mother’s death. Starting with Elizabeth, then Lazio, she tracks down Le Mat, who has since been taken off the police force, and finally meets the elusive Karlin. Their stories unfold through flashback sequences, creating a conflicting and contradictory picture o f the episodes lead­ing up to the fatal moment of Georgia’s death.

Episodically moving between the cocktail party, where smashingly debonair couples tangoed while Georgia drowned, and Nina’s present investigations, the film strives to draw as many parallels as it possibly can between Georgia and Nina. Aside from having the same actress play both parts, visual links are made between the view from Nina’s apart­ment and that from the house where Georgia died. But the parallel soon becomes strained and, in any case, something o f a lost opportu­nity. Nina’s career, boldly investigating tax fraud, is dropped early in the film, making redundant an obvious similarity between Nina and Georgia as women who knew too much.

The relationships of the characters in that ambiguous past, one quickly learns, were founded upon duplicity, deceit, betrayal, and their corresponding emotions: lust, anger, longing. Twenty years or so later, each shud­ders at the barest mention o f Georgia’s name, guardedly and coyly making their confessions to Nina.

The characters remain shrouded in secrecy, suffocating in the burdens of the past, and little is revealed. Red herrings abound. Might not Karlin, who it is suggested was having an affair with Georgia, be Nina’s father? Did the fact that Georgia met Elizabeth when she snapped a candid shot of Elizabeth kissing her lover Lazio on the beach (all the while being married to Karlin) have anything to do with taking her in? Much is suggested in Georgia, but teasingly left unanswered.

By implication the viewer finds out how Georgia died, but the characters themselves remain sketchy, essentially one-dimensional. The stilted characterizations occasionally veer toward caricature. The pivotal scene where Nina confronts Elizabeth about her mother is cumbersome and overly mannered, particu­larly when Nina’s dialogue runs along the lines of, “Am I supposed to have an emotional crisis

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

right now? I want to do the right thing.” Neither are the characters particularly engag­ing, making it difficult to really care about their suffering, or the outcome.

A major sub-plot involves a stalker, pre­sumably the person who planted the photo­graph and invitation in Nina’s apartment, but possibly also someone associated with the tax fraud cases Nina investigates (though this im­plication is made redundant when the stalker demands negatives o f Georgia’s photographs). The stalker is glimpsed early in the film, peer­ing up at Nina’s flat, and, later, behind the wheel o f a car in the parking lot where Nina has parked. In one unfortunate scene, how­ever, Lazio is attacked while he takes a shower (surprise, surprise) by the mystery stalker brandishing a knife and demanding the nega­tives. The next day, Lazio tells Nina, who notices the bruises on his face, that he has to go away for a few days. He is dispensed from the film.

The allusion to Hitchcock was apt, though very foreseeable, but Hitchcock wouldn’t have let go quite so easily.

GEORGIA Directed by Ben Lewin. Producer: Bob Weis. Screenplay: Ben Lewin, Joanna-Murray Smith, Bob Weis. Based on an original idea by Mac Gudg­eon. Director of photography: Yuri Sokol. Sound recordist: John Phillips. Editor: Edward McQueen- Mason. Production designer: Jon Dowding. Mu­sic: Paul Grobowsky. Cast: Judy Davis (N ina/ Georgia), Julia Blake (Elizabeth), John Bach (Karlin), Marshall Napier (Le Mat), Alex Menglet (Lazio), Louis Fiander (Scarlatti), Roy Baldwin (Librarian), Robert Meldrum (Alex), Production company: Jethro Films. Distributor: Hoyts, 35 mm, 92.5 mins. Australia. 1989.

NEW YORK STORIESR A F F A E L E C A P U T O

MARTIN SCORSESE’S “Life Lessons”, the first in the trilogy of mini-features that

make up New York Stories, employs an iris effect which, because it so consciously high­lights the act of looking, underscores the implosive, zeroing-in style that pervades much of Scorsese’s cinema. Like the figure of Lionel Dobie (Nick Nolte), who fetishizes certain parts of the body of his assistant-muse, Paulette (Rosanna Arquette), in particular her ankle, Scorsese is a fetishist of the objects, gestures and overall surfaces of the visual field his camera is trained on.

The iris device can be employed in two ways, either by opening out from a detail, or by closing in on one. In “Life Lessons” it’s put to use in both ways, but at two particular mo­ments in the film (not surprisingly, they are the opening and closing stages of the film), yet with a different function each time.

As the film opens there is a whole series of themes which successively open out from a number o f objects: a half-emptied bottle of brandy, a set of paint-encrusted brushes, a cassette player that Lionel often zoops-up in a frenzy of activity, a tube of paint that Lionel then accidentally steps on with a force that has its bluey substance shoot out rather than cream. The device functions to isolate these various elements from the rest of the frame,

61

TOP: LIONEL (NICK NOLTE), THE FETISHIZING ARTIST, AND HIS

ASSISTANT MUSE, PAULETTE (ROSANNA ARQUETTE). MARTIN

SCORSESE'S 'LIFE LESSONS', PART OF NEW YORK STORIES.

LOWER: A MODEST RETURN TO THE GENRE OF NEUROSIS:

SHELDON (WOODY ALLEN) AND LISA (MIA FARROW)

IN ALLEN'S 'OEDIPUS WRECKS'. NEW YORK STORIES.

draws attention to them, makes them central, and thereby asks what is the invisible link between them. Not content-wise, but style- wise, their formal link: a pattern of fragment­ing and opening out which creates an emo­tional or tonal suggestiveness that no dialogue could provide. This pattern permeates the space and character with a sense of nervy, obsessed, bottled-up energy that’s about to open out.

It’s in line with the abstract expressionism of Lionel Dobie’s art, and in particular the canvas he is working on at the film’s start. Life and art get inextricably intermingled at this point - the progression of the painting paral­leling the turbulent, obsessive, frustrating (they don’t sleep together) relationship Lionel has with Paulette. The final iris effect at the film’s close affirms this, because it works as a way of summing up, the iris tunnelling in rather than opening out. At his exhibition opening, the blackness tunnels toward a spot at the far end of the gallery, and isolates Lionel with another Paulette, a young, hopeful artist whom he

offers to take on as an assistant while at the same time fetishizing select parts of her body. (It’s not an irony that they’re standing be­neath the painting he was completing in the final weeks of his relationship with Paulette. Yet, there appears to be a comic sense to all this with the suggestion that the whole process is going to repeat itself. And, without being overly simplistic, it is sexual frustration which is at the heart of Lionel’s creative urges, the nature of his violent brushstrokes and col­ours.)

Perhaps this is expressed with greater inten­sity in an earlier scene, a scene which has a frontal shot of Lionel, bare chested and spot­ted with paint, gazing somnabulistically out and over the camera, apparently at the canvas he has been working on throughout the night. But then a cut to a medium-long shot reveals Lionel standing in the centre o f the studio, his back to the camera, the canvas to the right of frame, and his body turned to the left staring up at the small loft-within-a-loft where Paulette resides, and where she has just engaged in love play with a talented young painter. He stares up at the small enclosure in the same way that he has been staring at his canvas. This is what was meant by Scorsese’s ability to zero-in even at a distance.

It would seem facile to say that Scorsese’s musing over the nature of creativity has as

much to do with filmmaking as it has with painting, but it seems that Scorsese’s manner of enveloping filmmaking with painting tends to point beyond “Life Lessons”. Think of the way La Motta pounds the life out o f the “pretty boy” in R aging Bull, and then the image shifts to a slow-motion, point-of-view shot of his wife in the audience. Maybe the way Scorsese cuts and connects different shots - the ring and the audience, for instance - makes him something o f a painter: the colli­sion of these contrasting spaces is to a degree pictorial.

In comparison, the other two segments of New York Stories pale, especially Coppola’s. “Life Without Zoe” is a fluffy, fairy-tale-like adventure that’s a modern variation o f de Maupassant’s “The Necklace”. Coppola has of late taken to fairytale-like allusions but they have never been so lightweight, and don’t seem to coalesce with Coppola’s largely theat­rical cinematic style. There’s always the sense of things being staged in Coppola’s films, and it certainly does not seem to suit the con­densed form.

Finally, in all fairness, Woody Allen’s “Oedi­pus Wrecks” is charged with a nervy, frus­trated, maddening sensibility. But this is to do with character rather than composition of spatial elements, as it is in “Life Lessons” . The title says it all. It gives Woody direct lineage to Jerry Lewis, if anyone had doubts, though it’s without the “vulgarity” - there’s no trom­bone voice about to blast out “M-MA”. No, the hammering, retching voice in this little comedy belongs to ma herself. “Oedipus Wrecks” certainly appears as a summation of Allen’s comedy, but one couldn’t say it’s a high point. It’s a genuine and modest return to the genre of neurosis and self-pity, and self- pity spells self-parody. And that’s a good sign.

NEW YORK STORIES Producer: Robert Greenhut. LIFE LESSONS Directed by Martin Scorsese. Pro­ducer: Barbara De Fina. Screenplay: Richard Price. Director of photography: Nestor Almendros. Edi­tor: Thelma Schoonmaker. Production designer: Kristi Zea. Sound: James Sabat. Cast: Nick Nolte (Lionel Dobie), Rosanna Arquette (Paulette), Patrick O’Neal (Phillip Fowler), Jesse Borrego (Reuben Toro), Steve Buscemi (Gregory Stark), Peter Gabriel (Himself), Illeana Douglas (Paulette’s friend), life WITHOUT ZOE Directed by Francis Cop­pola. Producers: Fred Roos, Fred Fuchs. Screen­play: Francis Coppola, Sofia Coppola. Director of photography: Vittorio Storaro. Editor: Barry Malkin. Production designer: Dean Tavoularis. Sound: James Sabat. Music: Carmine Coppola; Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Cast: Heather McComb (Zoe), Tafia Shire (Charlotte), Giancarlo Giannini (Claudio), Paul Herman (Clifford), James Keane (Jimmy), Don Novello (Hector), Selim Tfifi (Abu), Carmine Coppola (Street musician), Carole Bou­quet (Princess Soroya). Oedipus w recks Directed by Woody Allen. Producer: Robert Greenhut. Executive producers: Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe. Screenplay: Woody Allen. Director of photogra­phy: Sven Nykvist. Editor: Susan E. Morse. Pro­duction designer: Santo Loquasto. Sound: James Sabat. Cast: Woody Allen (Sheldon Mills), Alia Farrow (Lisa), Julie Kavner (Treva), Mae Questel (Mother), Marvin Chatinover (Psychiatrist), Jessie Keosian (Aunt Ceil), George Schindler (Shandu), Bridgit Ryan (Rita), Edward I. Koch (Himself). A Touchstone presentation of a Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe production. Distributor: Road­show. 35 mm. 123 mins. USA. 1989. ■

6 2 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

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c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 6 3

THIS ISSUE: ACTING IN THE CINEMA, BY JAMES NAREMORE;

AND MASTERS OF STARLIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHERS IN HOLLYWOOD,

BY DAVID FAHEY AND LINDA RICH

ACTING IN THE CINEMAJames Naremore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, hb, rrp $47.95

J O H N C O N O M O S

“Paint my eyes on my eyelids, and I’ll walk through it.”- ROBERT MITCHUM

THE QUESTION OF film performance has up to recent times - say, till the end of the

Seventies - been marginalized in film theory and criticism. Since then a small analytical literature has been gradually built up around this complex, fascinating problematic. What is clear from this literature is that when we try to theorize in a meaningful general way about performance, we are confronted by many

6 4

conceptual difficulties. To begin with, when we talk about film acting, does it differ in any significant way across genres? If there are important critical differences to be noted, why is this so? What we can say at this early stage of analysing screen performance is that it needs the same kind of detailed emphasis that ques­tions of film narrative structure have received over the past 20 years. This is absolutely essential before we can make sensible, in­formed statements about its nature.

Performance is a central part of our appre­ciation of the many different genre films that constitute American narrative cinema: the western, film noir, melodrama and comedy. When we study genre films, we should con­sider more than just questions o f visual style, thematic oppositions, and narrative structure.

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

We need to explore the reasons why perform­ance is an underdeveloped topic in genre studies. Recent genre commentators have been discussing (albeit in a fleeting manner) the broad generic conventions o f performance by looking at the situation of the actor as subject within a film. As Richard De Cordova sug­gests, it is necessary to concentrate on gener­ating a general understanding of performance apropos of its role within the economy of genre cinema.1 To come to terms with the complex dynamic nature o f film performance in the light o f its rich, diverse traditions of radio, vaudeville, theatre, television, popular music and the cinema itself, we have to adopt a more productive comparative approach to the issue of performance and genre. I f we are to shift performance from its current status as a “catch-all category”, as De Cordova states, to a more desirable status as “an object of theory”, then we are obliged to ask more systematic questions about how performance functions across genre.2

Someone who has been asking fruitful, open- ended questions about the cultural, historical and theoretical dimensions o f film perform­ance has been James Naremore in his im­mensely readable and suggestive new work titled Acting in the Cinem a 3 (1988). It is a richly detailed analysis probing the expressive nuances, emotional intensities and socio-cul- tural determinations o f film acting. His criti­cism is informed by a phenomenological approach which uses the basic concepts of classical and contemporary film theory, as well as the writings of influential non-film theorists like Stanislavsky, Brecht and the ‘Chicago School’ of social anthropology. In particular, he shows how different approaches to acting have certain ideological implications about art, culture and society. In addition, Nar­emore is able to demonstrate how screen performance is linked to the presentation o f self in society. To do this he adroitly uses Erving Goffman’s sociological ideas about personality, self and character being con­structed by everyday role-playing. Naremore is refreshingly candid about the conceptual problems facing anyone who wishes to talk about performance in the age o f mechanical reproduction. He acknowledges from the outset that movie actors exist as agents of narrative and thus cannot be discussed as if they were operating in a vacuum independent o f the many performative traditions and crafts that surround and shape them.

FACING PAGE: CARY GRANT AND KATHERINE HEPBURN,

TWO OF THE STARS ANALYSED IN NAREMORE'S BOOK, HERE IN A

PUBLICITY SHOT FOR BRINGING UP BABY. RIGHT: ROGER THORNHILL

(CARY GRANT) AND EVE KENDALL (EVA MARIE SAINT) IN

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

Naremore is keen to show his readers how our experience o f watching movie performers depends not only on pleasure that can be obtained from storytelling, but also from the pleasure that comes from watching their bodies and taking delight in expressive movement, enjoying familiar performing skills and taking an interest in actors as ‘real people’. All these significant aspects o f performance have been described by Stephen Heath as being related to the idea o f the human body in the cinema as a fragmentary, elemental lure for the viewer:“The body in films is also moments, intensi­ties, outside a simple constant unity of the body as a whole; films (contain) bits of bodies, gestures, desirable traces, fetish points - if we take fetishism here as an investment in a bit, a fragment, for its own sake, as the end o f the accomplishment of a desire.” 4 For Naremore, talking about performance - in terms of pass­ing subtle gestures, fragments o f the actor’s costumes in relation to mise-en-scene and the body, shifting vocal inflections and body rhythms - is like “wrestling with Proteus”.5 For what is at stake here is one of the most crucial problems of contemporary film theory and criticism: how best to talk about the ever­present and changing visual, psychological and cultural complexities o f performance ? The attempt to use the right kind of language in describing and analysing these elusive quali­ties is complicated by the fact, as Naremore points out, that the movements, inflections and gestures o f actors in a movie are “pre­sented in gradations o f more and less - subtle degrees o f ever-changing expression that are easy to comprehend in the context o f a given film but difficult to analyse without falling back on unwieldy tables o f statistics or fuzzy, adjectival language”.6 This problem applies to the spectrum of film performance, irrespective of any theoretical emphasis, from the Meyer- holdian approach as exemplified by the sub­lime Buster Keaton - where the body is an instrument for finely modulated acrobatic skills - to the Stanislavskian notion o f acting repre­sented by Marlon Brando, where the actor is encouraged to perform more or less naturally, letting facial expression or gesture stem from deeply felt emotion.

What I propose to do at this juncture is to deal with Naremore’s general theoretical framework that is used to analyse film per­formance in the context of television, every­day life, theatre and popular culture. The author deploys a wide frame of reference in talking about the ideological assumptions involved in certain performances in American mainstream cinema and the movies o f Euro­pean directors like Godard, Bresson and Wenders. In addition, taking my cue from the excellent detailed readings of star performers like Lillian Gish, Charles Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn,Marlon Brando and Cary Grant that are lo­cated in the second section o f the book, I wish

or less “true to themselves”); and (e) the anthropomorphic code (which is a mise-en- scene that shapes performance through make­up, clothes, and the inanimate objects with which the actor comes into direct contact). These so-called codes have been utilized throughout the book in a flexible non-dog- matic fashion avoiding the reductionist ex­cesses o f past film theory in certain quarters of Anglo-American scholarship. Naremore es­chews jargon for jargon’s sake and deploys these codes in a creative discursive manner in all four chapters of the book’s first part. In­deed, he applies them when appropriate to the close readings of individual actors that follow in the second part of Acting in the Cinema. More important, Naremore’s systematically productive treatment of film performance is mapped onto history, technology and the politics of spectacle.

The final section, “Film as a Performance Text”, makes rewarding reading as he shows how R ear Window (1954) and The King o f Comedy { 1983) depend on the theme of per­formance; utilize complex acting styles, cast­ing techniques and rhetorical strategies; and depend on the audience’s familiarity with the star system. R ear Window is especially inter­esting in the way Naremore analyses the tex­tual and performative dynamics of the movie in accordance with Hitchcock’s view of the actor as “the man [sic] who can do nothing extremely well”.7 To test his definition of the screen actor the director had his protagonist (Stewart) immobilized with a broken leg in a wheelchair. Thus Stewart, in his position of voyeuristic impotency, is emblematic o f the movie viewer, as well as a metaphor for the film actor.

As to the question “What is acting?”, Nar­emore, following the ideas of Goffman and Kristeva, sees all forms of human communica-

to talk about Grant’s performance in North By Northwest (1959), stressing his huge im­portance as one of American cinem a’s consummate actors.Grant, like other great stars such as James Cagney (an actor whose acrobatic skills and improvisatory abil­ity to control the screen place him with Grant in the major vaudevil- lian realist mode of acting), James Stewart,Burt Lancaster, the cool loner Robert Mitchum, the highly gifted but often over­looked Barbara Stan­wyck, and the reliably in telligent R obert Ryan, all shared the common capacity to appear both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. It is interesting to note how all these immaculate performers have contrib­uted in substantial terms to noir acting. As in melodrama, performance in film noir can be seen as the expression o f inner emotional states o f the characters as represented through elements of the mise-en-scene. All seven per­formers are notable for their immeasurable, expressive codes and stylized, peculiar move­ments. Some of them, such as Stewart, Mitchum, Ryan, Lancaster and Stanwyck, have the performative ability to convey disenchant­ment and vulnerability - two key emotional states for film noir. From Cagney’s white-heat nervous energy and Ryan’s smooth appear­ances concealing a twisted interior, we can trace a certain trajectory of noir performance that emphasizes a violent psychopathology, it is embodied in the performances of such tal­ented actors as Richard Widmark, Lee J. Cobb and Laird Cregar, for example, and in contem­porary performers like Harvey Keitel, the late John Cazale and the impressive James Woods.

For Naremore, film performance consists of “five codes” ofperformance: (a) the boundary code (this refers to the framing or cueing process that takes place between the per­former and his or her audience); (b) the rhetorical code (the rhetorical conventions which control the ostensiveness of the per­former, his or her position within the perform­ing space and mode of address to the audi­ence); (c) the expressive code (this denotes a series o f expressive techniques that govern things like posture, gesture and voice, and regulates the body as an index to age, gender, class, and ethnicity); (d) the harmonic code (which is a logic of coherence allowing actors to seem more or less in step with changes in the story, more or less in character, and more

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 65

tion as involving behaviour. At its simplest, this concept o f human behaviour signifies the transportation of everyday existence into a theatrical realm. Whatever the form o f human exchange, it essentially concerns the notion of a performer’s communicating with an audi­ence. Therefore, at its most sophisticated, we have a form of film and theatre acting which is an art dedicated to “the systematic ostenta­tious depiction of character, or to what seven­teenth century England described as ‘per­sonation’ ”.8 In the wake of certain film theo­rists like John Ellis, Naremore sees filmed performance as being structured by the so- called “photo effect”, which is a delicate ten­sion between preservation and loss, presence and absence.

The author’s treatment o f film acting incor­porates the by-now-familiar triple articula­tion which lists the three most important de­termining factors in shaping stardom as: (a) the ‘real’ person of the actor; (b) the persona which is constructed about stars through publicity and their association with certain types created by the system of genres; and (c) their particular parts within individual films. In other words, the star is an amalgam of actor, part and persona as mediated through genre. Naremore examines seven legendary stars and all point to the same phenomenon of cultural and textual dynamics: their names circulate through publicity, everyday language and biography; each one of them represents an ideolect: that is to say, a set of performing attributes that is systematically underlined in movies and sometimes copied by impression­ists like Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) in The K ing o f Comedy. I f we see a film as centr­ing on the issues, fame, celebrity and myth, then we need to ask ourselves the following questions:Where does the actor end and the character begin? How much does perform­ance ‘writes’ the character? And, How much is performance an illusion created by our fasci­nation with actors and celebrity? Some of us may even believe that actors do write or con­struct the movies in which they appear. To cite Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Sunset Boulevard (1950): “People don’t know that somebody actually writes the picture. They think actors make it up as they go along.”9 But even if they do make some contribution to the construc­tion of characters in a movie, asks Naremore, how do we recognize their work ifit is grounded in their own bodies? To echo the author’s ref­erence to Yeats, how7 do wo separate the dancer from the dance?

Finally, I wish to examine briefly how the author skilfully anatomizes Cary Grant’s per­formance of self-reflexive understatement in North by Northwest { 1959). Naremore treats the movie as a complex text of delicately orchestrated performative dynamics highlight­ing Grant’s star persona as one o f Holly­wood’s most glamorous and sophisticated lovers since the early Thirties, when he ap­peared in several Mae West mo\ies. What we encounter in this particularly fecund reading of Grant’s performance, in terms of his par­ticular good looks, brilliant light comedy timing skills and highly recognizable iconic

traits, is the central concept o f the star as spectacle. In the overall economy o f the movie, w7e are shown how Grant’s star image is based on his tremendous talent for verbal and physi­cal agility. Grant w7as cinema’s enduring per­sonification of elegance, wit and sophistica­tion. What we notice in Naremore’s account of Grant’s precisely timed minimalist acting style is the author’s spectatorial delight in experiencing the playful self-reflexive dialectic between Grant’s supple body, dapper clothes and his celebrated persona of a Hollywood matinee idol who aged gracefully and was always known for his relaxed assured screen performances. What motivates this particu­larly fine negotiation of Grant’s dexterous performance in North By Northwest is Nar­emore’s sharp feel for Grant’s Kuleshovian style o f acting. Grant is more concerned with mechanics than with feeling. Everything for this actor depended on athletic skill, timing and the awesome capability of mastering small, isolated reactions. Hitchcock understood this clearly. Grant’s performance is structured on the actor’s unsurpassed ability to comprehend classical film rhetoric. Naremore is especially good on delineating how Grant’s performa­tive skills rely on his ability to run, walk, climb, and execute everyday actions in a graceful manner. Above all, the movie’s visual dy­namic, cultural codes and rhythm have been

shaped by Grant’s performance o f clearly defined and perfectly executed uncomplicated small actions. It is a performance typical of Grant, in that it celebrated a contagious zest for life. You just know that Grant had fun in making North By Northwest. It is as clear as the three faces chiselled in the side o f Mount Rushmore. The last words shall go to David Thomson: “It is only natural that his very best works - his most complex, amusing, but un­settling pictures - are both studies in Holly­wood fun, and in the particular delight there is (or was) in making films.”10

NOTES1. Richard De Cordova, “Genre and Performance:

An Overview”, in Barn7 Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, Austin, The University of Texas Press, 1988, pp.129-139.2. ibid., p.129.3. James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema, Uni­

versity of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, hb, rrp $47.95.4. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema, Bloom­ington, Indiana University, 1981, p.183.5. Naremore, op cit., p.2.6. ibid., p.2.7. Alfred Hitchcock, “Direction”, (1937) quoted in Naremore, p.34.8. Naremore, ibid., p.23.9. ibid., p.157.10. David Thomson, “Charms and the Man”, Film Comment, Feb. 1984, p.64.

66 C N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

MASTERS OF STARLIGHTPHOTOGRAPHERS IN HOLLYWOODDavid Fahey and Linda RichColumbus Books, London, 1988, 288 pp, rrp $47.95

A D R I A N M A R T I N

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfil its mission, it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be re­flected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its bright­ness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adven­ture of drama and light- JOSEF VON STERNBERG,

FUN IN A CHINESE LA UNDRY.

A TITLE LIKE Masters o f Starlight might conjure a book solely devoted to what we

have come to think of as Hollywood ‘glam­our’ photography: the luminous faces o f the great stars, swathed in an ethereal, lyrical ab­straction. This book certainly contains some o f the finest examples o f the glamour genre, but its brief is in fact much wider: “Photogra­phers in Hollywood”, as the sub-tide puts it. This means that, although the book’s central emphasis is on portraiture, and its stylistic evolution, there are two other vast, and sig­nificant, areas into which the editors stray: the ‘film still’, and photojournalism.

Masters o f Starlight is in many respects one o f the finest books o f its kind. Photographic specialists and connoisseurs will certainly not be disappointed by it. The images used in the book derive from an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the result of work undertaken over a six-year period by the Hollywood Photographers Archives. Editors Fahey and Rich, both among the founders of the Archives, ensure not only a decent, repre­sentative spread o f Hollywood photographers (a truly rare thing in books o f this kind); they also uphold the highest standards o f photo­graphic reproduction, using only original prints made from the original negative or transpar­ency shot by the photographer.

Although well-known film writer Mitch Tuchman is thanked for providing “critical di­rection” to the project, the introductory essay by the editors contains very little that re­sembles film, or photography, criticism. Be­yond a very useful outline of the history o f the area, Fahey and Rich, as spokespersons for the Archives, are mainly concerned to claim Hol­lywood photography as ‘art photography’. This they do with no small amount o f earnest­ness and zealotry. For instance, they rewrite the doctrine o f auteurism for their own ends by claiming, territorially, that only their cho­sen heroes truly deserve to be thought of as au­teurs or artists within the studio system: “in the aura o f their golden years the still photog­raphers o f Hollywood assume a role somehow more exalted than their colleagues in the movie-making business because their accom­plishments are more clearly the product of their own abilities, less evidently the result of collaboration.” (p.28)

Thus is art - and artistry - defined in the

witheringly old-fashioned terms ofin dividual - ist ‘vision’; accordingly, the personal anec­dotes, reminiscences and revelations of the photographers involved seem to count more than any other possible critical consideration. In general, the text, in its glosses on the photographers and images included, rarely rises above the somewhat hype-ridden cliches of an ancient form o f ‘fine art-speak’. O f the work o f Ruth Harriet Louise, for instance, we read: “Although her subjects seldom looked directly into the camera, they seemed to proj­ect themselves into it nonetheless. ” Photogra­phers tend to be especially praised when their style corresponds to honoured movements in painting or design, particularly of the ‘mod­ernist’ variety: Will Connell is described as creating “precise, hard-edged images with sharp, constructivist design”; Bert Longworth is credited with exploring a “photo montage” style.

O f course, what quickly disappears from this book, as a result of such a desire to round up some select photographs for the corral of fine art, is any sense of Hollywood photogra­phy as an often exhilaratingly anonymous, convention-bound, hokey, corny, cliched form - in short, as popular culture. Not primarily a form o f self expression for artists (although I don’t doubt it functioned as such for some photographers at an explicit or subterranean level); but a channel, like everything else in mass entertainment, for cultural expression. Thus, you will read nothing in Masters o f Starlight, as you might in more truly ‘critical’ books like Alfred Appel’s Signs o f Life, about the different ‘codings’ of gender in these pho­tographs (and the often wild variations on the given codes); nothing about Hollywood’s racial or class stereotypes, and how they are ‘per­formed’ via modelling gesture and visual com­position; nothing to do with any of the issues and speculations concerning image, narrative, spectacle and much else that arise irresistibly from these wonderfully glossy pages. At its

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

FACING PAGE: THE MARRIAGE OF LIGHT AND

HOLLYWOOD'S TRANSCENDENTAL MYTHOLOGY OF THE

'STAR': EUGENE ROBERT RICHEE'S PHOTO OF TALLULAH

BANKHEAD (C. 1932). ABOVE: RICHARD C. MILLER'S PHOTO

OF JAMES DEAN AND ELIZABETH TAYLOR DURING A

WEEKEND BREAK IN THE FILMING OF GIANT. (1955) (THE

ISSUE OF 'LOOK' DEAN IS READING FEATURES TAYLOR

ON THE COVER AS 'MOTHER OF THE YEAR'.)

limit, this kind of old-fashioned artspeak can only gesture, with a feeble sociological air, towards the ‘spirit’ or the ‘obsessions’ o f those times long gone that are captured so truthfully and artfully by the great photographers.

However, one doesn’t really need this text as a guide through the images themselves, and it is in these images that the fascination o f the book truly resides. As well as giving us the ‘greats’ - George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Edward Steichen, e t a l - Masters o f Star­light covers others, further back, like Arthur Rice and Witzel, who receive only the slightly creepy bio-line “birthplace and life dates unknown”! In keeping with many art-angled histories of the area, the story seems to end in the early 1970s - here represented by Douglas Kirkland’s colour portraits of Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. Fahey and Rich, to their credit, are not as fanatically ‘purist’ as some others are in delimiting their subject (the famed photo-anthologist John Kobal, for example, tends to pour scorn over almost every strain and tendency in Hollywood photography beyond the 1940s). Nonethe­less, in their search for photographic ‘art’ - particularly via ‘star’ portraiture - they pull up shy o f a few extremely interesting areas.

I mentioned at the start o f this review three large categories of Hollywood photography: glamour, film still, and photojournalism. Masters o f Starlight, as can be expected, has no problems accommodating the first category. The genre o f glamour portraiture was, after all, a perfectly, elegantly ‘formalist’ paradigm. The technical elaboration of light as the essen­tial basis, the life and death (so to speak) o f any

6 7

Stacey locally, has re­discovered, and taken off from, the nameless fictional intrigues and com posite stylistic strategies inherent in literally thousands of these film stills. Fahey and Rich touch on this whole area in their se­lection of wonderful images relating to Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in Gilda, Broder­ick Crawford in Down Three D ark Streets and Robert Montgomery in The Earl o f Chicago. Yet even here they clearly favour photographic artists (Robert Coburn in the first two in­stances, Laszlo Willin- ger in the third) who abstract and purify their material - who make it less like Hollywood and more like art.

GLAMOUR: PETER BASCH'5 IMAGE OF BRIGITTE BARDOT ON

THE SET OF LES BIJOUTIERS DU CLAIR DE LUNE (1959).

photographic image, still or moving - the subject that so obsessed Josef von Sternberg - marries exacdy with Hollywood’s transcen­dental mythology of the ‘star’ as he or she who attracts light (and adoration), who shines and illuminates the darkness. Such a poetic vision - displayed so well in this volume by Arthur F. Kales’ portrait of Thomas Meighan, or Eu­gene Robert Richee’s photo of Tallulah Bankhead - governed not only Hollywood still photography of the 1920s and ’30s, but also the more romantic and melancholic modes of cinema during the same period: Borzage, Sternberg, Hathaway’s Peter Ibhetson.

The book is rather wary of claiming the film still genre as ‘art’ in quite the same fashion. This is perhaps because what is known in the industry as ‘production stills’ - various restag­ings or distillations of scenes from a film in production - are more nakedly promotional in nature, and more frankly parasitic on moving pictures, than glamour portraits. They are often also, as is their nature, a lot crazier and more vulgarly spectacular - more like popular movie culture - than glamour shots. A whole generation of today’s ‘post modern’ artists, from Cindy Sherman in America to Robyn

Photojournalism - of the sort pioneered and virtually trademarked by Life magazine in its heyday - also sits a little uneasily within the terms of this collection. This genre ushered into the domain of Hollywood photography a whole new pictorial texture - contrivedly ‘messy’ at times, weirdly angular and dis­torted, full o f strange compositional vectors, harping on a certain note of disconnectedness and alienation. Many of the fine ‘reportage’ photographs in this book - such as those by Phil Stern and John Swope - capture these qualities strikingly. Fahey and Rich tend to thematize such images in the predictable ways - as revealing the ‘truth’ of actors in their un­guarded moments away from the camera, or of the filmmaking process itself, ‘behind the scenes’ in old Tinseltown. Perhaps attempting to forge a continuous ‘tradition’ from glam­our photography to photojournalism, the book tends to favour the portraiture of this period - with certainly an inordinate amount o f shots of Marilyn Monroe, by many different hands. (Some mythologies indeed die hard.)

Yet photojournalism, it seems to me, looks away from both the Hollywood cinema of its time, and the strictures of ‘Hollywood pho­tography’ as suggested by this book. The ‘subject matter’ of these images is no longer Hollywood (its stars or its world) because, at

their strangest, they quietly detonate the whole idea o f a ‘subject’ at their centre o f focus. Many of these images, pole vaulting as they do into the heart o f the irreality at the tangled phenomenal surface o f events, are completely ¿^centred, not only pictorially but ‘spiritu­ally’, in their mood and tone. They hurl the viewer around, from one border o f the frame to the next: just what is it that you are meant to be seeing here?

O f course, in exploring such terrain, L ife- style photojournalism prefigured new, post- classical forms o f cinema, which work through the distended, lazily exploded narratives o f the ‘road movie’, and the pictorial textures o f odd actuality: the films of, among others, Monte Heilman, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Robert Frank, who moved from still photography to cinema (most recently Candy Mountain with Tom Waits and Bulle Ogier, as yet unseen here), and Dennis Hop­per (see his photographic collection Out o f the Sixties). And photojournalism’s arrival an­nounced the historical moment at which ‘starlight’ could no longer be the centrifugal, seductive force holding together an art, a culture, or an industrial dream factory like Hollywood. Perhaps the ‘golden years’ pre­ceding that break-up were only short lived, almost illusory, anyway. Our nostalgia for that time is rendered rich indeed by a book as sumptuous as Masters o f Starlight. m

BOOKS RECEIVED

THE ACTOR AND HIS TIMEJohn Gielgud, in collaboration with John Miller and John PowellSidgwick & Jackson, London, 1989, pb, rrp $24.99. A revised and updated edition o f Gielgud’s

1979 autobiography which coincides with his 85 th birthday.

CULT MOVIES THREEDanny PearySidgwick & Jackson, London, 1989, pb, rrp $24.99. A sequel to Peaty’s two earlier books. There are 50 new tides, ranging from such respect­able classics as Dr. Strangelove and Psycho to the X-rated Cafe Flesh.

MARILYN MON AMOURTHE PRIVATE ALBUM OF ANDRE DES DIENESAndre des DienesSidgwick & Jackson, London, pb, rrp $26.99.A chronological collection of mostly-unseen stills (all black and white) o f Marilyn, by the LA-based Hungarian photographer. An un­usually comprehensive view of one person’s emotional and physical changes over 17 years.

WARDROBE • MAKE-UP VANS • CAMERA TRUCKS • CAST VANS • PROPS VANS • UNIT VEHICLES • TRACKING VEHICLES

FOR THE SUPPLY OF ALL FILM PRODUCTION TRANSPORT CONTACT DAVID SUTTOR ON (02) 436 3191

3 18 WILLOUGHBY ROAD, NAREMBURN, SYDNEY

STATION WAGONS • SEDANS • HI-ACE VANS • 4 X 4 TOYOTA LANDCRUISERS • ACTION VEHICLES • TRAY TOPS • BUSES

PROUD TO BE SUPPLYING:• 4 Day Revolution• Rainbow Warrior• Kokoda Crescent• A Long Way From Home• Australian Break

68 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

FEATURES 1 P ro d , co -o rd in a to r D e b o ra h Sam uels A sst grips Ia n B ird C a te re r (M e lb ) Sw eet S ed u ctio n

PRE PRODUCTION 1 F in a n ce B e lin d a W illiam s W arren G rieve C a te re r (C airn s) C a th y T ro u t

A cco u n ts assist. A m an da Kelly A aron W alk er P u blicity L io n e l M id fo rdALMOST ALIEN E x e c , p r o d .’s assist. A n n e C ash in G affer B rian B an sg ro ve Stills p h o to g ra p h e r G reg N oak es

P ro d u ctio n co . E n te r ta in m e n t P artn ers R e cep tio n is t A n n e tte N evill E le ctr ic ia n Paul G a n tn e r C astin g L iz M u llin ar C a stin gP ro d u ce r Ja m es M ich a e l V e rn o n L o c a tio n m an ag er R alp h P rice C o lin C hase E d ito r T im Lew is

D ire c to r R o l f de H e e r U n it m an ag er M ich a el B a tc h e lo r G ra n t A tk in son A sst, ed ito r P e te r M c B a inS crip tw riter P e te r L o fg ren 1st assist, d irec to r B rian G id d ens B o o m o p erato r G erry N u cifo ra E d g e N u m b e re r P e te r T h o rn to n

A sso c, p ro d u cer P en n y W all 2 n d assist, d irecto r P e te r V o e te n A rt d irecto r Jam es K ib b le C a s t : G u y P earce (F ly n n ).P h o to g ra p h y M a rtin M c G ra th 3rd assist, d irecto r R o b V isser C o stu m e design er R o g e r K irk S y n o p s is : A ctio n -p a ck ed and h u m o ro u s1 st asst d irecto r D o n C ran b erry P r o d ./ U n it ru n n er A n d rew P o w er M ak e-u p Lesley V an derw alt lo o k a t th e o th e r side o f F ly n n ’s p erson a.E d ito r Pip p a A n d erso n C o n tin u ity K ay H en n essy H airdresser C heryl W illiam sC astin g F o rca st F o cu s p uller P e te r van S a n ten W ard ro b e super. M e l D ykes LINDA SAFARIP u b licity L io n e l M id fo rd C la p p e r/ L o a d er Paul T illey W a rd ro b e standby Jo h n Sh ea P ro d . c o . So u n d stag e A ustralia L im itedS y n o p s is : A T V w eath er fo reca ster g oes C am era assistant R o ss W illiam s W ard ro b e assts A n d rew S h o rt D ist. co m p an y U A A

th ro u g h a m id -life crisis w h en h e d iscov ers, S o u n d reco rd ist Jo h n Phillips Ju lie F ran k h am P ro d u ce r T ib o r M eszaro sa fter 1 8 years o f m arriage an d tw o ch ild ren , B o o m o p era to r S te p h en V au g h an Prop s m ak er W arren Kelly A n im atio n d irecto r L asz lo U jvarith a t his w ife is an alien. G affer R o b Y o u n g Prop s buyers Su e M aybury Scrip tw riters Jo a n A m b ro se

B e s t B o y P e te r M o lo n e y Paul D u lieu T ib o r M eszaro sBREAKAWAY G en era to r op. R o y P r itch e tt S tan d b y props H arry Z e tte l P e te r Jeffrey

P ro d . c o . Breakaw ay F ilm s P ty L td / G rip Ia n B en ella ck Sp ecial e ffects V isual E ffe cts P ty L td S crip t ed ito r Jo a n A m b ro se

U k iy o F ilm s P ty L td G rips assistant A rth u r M an ousakis S ce n ic artist R ay P ed ler Based o n n ov el by C o p e r , G a t 8c

D ist. co m p an y S m a rt E g g / C in e m a C o stu m e r d esign er Jea n n ie C a m ero n C o n stru ctio n m gr. D a n n y B u rn e tt R o z g o n i

E n terp rises L td S tan d b y w ard ro be M a rio n B o y ce C o n stru c tio n forem an Phillip W o rth P h o to g rap h y S a n d o r Polyak

P ro d u cers D o n M c L e n n a n W a rd ro b e assistant S u e A rm stro n g S o u n d ed itors K arin W h ittin g to n S o u n d reco rd ist R ic C u rtin

Ja n e B a ila n tyne M a k e-u p Jo se P erez N ich o las B reslin E d ito r G eza PaalD ire c to r D o n M c L e n n a n H air L o li S an ch ez E d itin g assistant D avid G rusovin P ro d , design er S a n d o r Polyak

S crip tw riter Ja n Sardi P ro d u ctio n design er T e l S to lfo S tu n ts co o rd in a to r G uy N orris C o m p o sers K . PeekP h o to g ra p h y Z b ig n iew F ried rich A rt d irecto r B e rn a d e tte W ynack S tu n ts T h e S tu n t A g ency R . Sz ik ora

C astin g G reg A pps Prop s buyers M u rray Kelly Still p h o to g rap h y Jim T o w n ley C .S . B o g d a n

S y n o p s is : W h en Jo e y (p riso n er o n th e ru n ) D aryl M ills R u n n ers Sara Prob y n G . B erk es

takes R eg in ald (a c c o u n ta n t) as h is h o sta g e , S e t dresser T rish K ea tin g A lan L o n g M . F en y o

he g ets m o re th an h e b arg ain ed for. S tan d b y props B rian L an g U n it p u b licist A n n ie W rig h t A . B o d n a rA sst, bu yer H am ish A ld erso n -H ick s C a te rin g F east F ilm C aterin g G . Szen tm ih aly i

THE PHANTOM MOVIE S a fe ty / S tu n ts N ew G en era tio n S tu n ts S tu d io s W arn er V illag e R o ad sh o w A sso c, p ro d u cer R o b e r t A . C o ck sP ro d . co . P h a n to m F ilm s Pty L td C o -o rd in a to r/ S a fe ty A rch ie R o b e rts S tu d ios -Q u een slan d E x e c , p ro d u cer H an n ah D o w n ieP ro d u ce r P e te r S jo q u is t A rtist van driver F ran k M a n g a n o L ab o ra to ry C o lo rfilm P ro d , supervisor D avid D o w n ie

Scrip tw riter K en Shadie M u / W r bus driver A lan B o y d L e n g th 1 1 0 m ins P ro d , m anagers E n d re Sik

B ased o n co m ic by L e e Falk U n it g en . driver L lo yd M iln e G aug e 3 5 m m Ja n o s Ju h asz

P ro d , d esign er G race W alker C a terer Ban daid e S h o o tin g sto ck K odak P ro d , secretary A llie C o n le y

E x e c , p ro d u cer B ru ce S h erlo ck P u b licity L io n e l M id fo rd C a s t : Bryan B ro w n (C o o p e r ) , Jo h n C larke Prod , acco u n ta n ts R o b e rt Sharpe

A sso c, p ro d u cer M ark T u rn b u ll Stills p h o to g ra p h e r G reg N oak es (S h ee d y ), D eb o ra h U n g e r (L itte ll) , G eo rg e S a n d o r A n taln e

E d ito r P e te r C arrod us T akei ( T akahashi), N ich olas Ead ie ( K e en a n ) 1st asst d irecto r M ik lo s K atalinTHE STARS ARE UPSIDE DOWN A sst, ed ito r A lan W o o d ru ff S y n o p s is : W ar crim es trials o n A m b o n Is- C a stin g W a te rm elo n V alley P ro d u ctio n s

P ro d . c o . S o u n d sta g e In te rn a tio n a l L td E d g e n u m b ere r P e te r T h o rn to n land in 1 9 4 6 . S to ry b o ard Ja n o s K ato n a

D ist. co m p an y A u stralian T .V . S o u n d ed ito r C ra ig C arter C h a ra c ter design er Ja n o s K ato n a

N etw o rk L td .. , B .B .C . D ia lo g u e ed ito r Livia R u zic FLYNN M u sic p erfo rm ed by Kevin P eek

A cq u is itio n s , B .B .C . E n terp rises , S o u n d assistant Jam es H arvey E xecu tiv e p rod u cer P e te r B o y le S o u n d ed itors R ic C u rtin

G rassh op p er P ro d u ctio n s C astin g L iz M u llin ar C astin g P ro d u cer F ran k H o w so n S. K alm an

P ro d u ce r T ib o r M eszaro s C a s t : T err i G a rb e r (T e rr i N ie lso n ); D avid Scrip tw riters F ran k H o w so n M ixers R ic C u rtin

D ire c to r M a rio A n d reacch io R o b e rts , A lan F le tc h e r , N ich o las H am - A lister W eb b S. K alm an

Scrip tw riter Jo y W h itb y m o n d . D ire c to r B rian Kavanagh A n im atio n H o llo L asz lo F ilmB ased o n n ovel by G ab rie l A lin g to n P h o to g rap h y Jo h n W h eeler S tu d ioE x e c , p ro d u cer H a n n a h D o w n ie 8c BLOOD OATH L in e p rod u cer B arb i T ay lo r O p tica ls H u n g arian F ilm L a b o ra to ry

T ib o r M eszaro s P ro d . c o . B lo o d O a th P ro d u ctio n s P / L P ro d , execu tive L y n n H o w so n S tu d io s S o u n d stag e A ustralia L im ited

A sso c, p ro d u cer Jo y W h itb y P ro d u cer C h arles W aterstreet P ro d u ctio n m an ag er T a tts B ish o p H o llo L asz lo F ilm Stu d io

P ro d , supervisor R o b e r t C o ck s C o -p ro d u c er A n n ie Bleakley P ro d , c o -o rd in a to r A m an da C ritten d e n H u n g a ro to n

S tu d io s So u n d sta g e A u stralia L im ited D ire c to r S te p h en W allace F in a n ce B elind a W illiam s T rack s

T rack s Scrip tw riters and A cco u n ts asst. S im o n e H ig g in b o tto m L ab o ra to ry H u n g arian F ilmG rassh op p er P ro d u ctio n s P ro d u cers D en is W h itb u rn E x e c , p ro d u cer assist. A n n e C ash in Laboratory '

L a b o ra to ry M o v ielab B rian W illiam s L o ca tio n m an ag er C h ris O d gers L e n g th 9 0 m ins

B u d g e t $ 1 .4 m illion P h o to g ra p h y R u ssell B o y d U n it m an ag er (M e lb ) R o ry H o g a n G aug e 3 5 m m

L e n g th 9 2 m ins S co u n d reco rd ist B e n O sm o 1st asst d irec to r C aro ly n n e C u n n in g h am S h o o tin g sto ck E a stm a n co lo r

G au g e 1 6 m m E d ito r N ick Beau m an 2 n d asst d irecto r M ark C h am b ers S y n o p s is : A sto ry o f in trig u e , ad v entu re ,

S y n o p s is : T h e sto ry o f T av y , a 1 6 -y ea r-o ld P ro d , d esign er B ern ard H id es P ro d ./ u n it ru n n er D e re k R ich ards m ystery, a ctio n an d ro m a n ce , co m b in in g

E n g lish servant g irl, w h o finds lov e and a L in e p ro d u cer R ich ard B ren n a n C o n tin u ity Sh irley Ballard h u m o u r and hero ism w ith ro c k ’n ’roll m usic

ch a llen g in g new life in m id -1 9 th cen tu ry P ro d , c o o rd in a to r B e rn a d e tte O ’M ah o n y S o u n d R eco rd is t Jo h n R ow ley fo r all ages. T h e h ero in e is L in d a , a p o lice

A ustralia . P ro d , m an ag er H e le n W atts B o o m o p era to r C h ris R o lan d o fficer w ith In te rp o l. Sh e is w ell k n ow n fo r

U n it/ lo c a tio n m g r. H u g h Jo h n sto n G rip (M e lb ) R o b b ie H an sford h er T a e K w o n D o and h er lin gu istic skills.

B FEATURES ■ P ro d , secretary C h ris G o rd o n G rips asst (M e lb ) R o d S h o rt Several stories o p erate sim u ltan eo u sly and

I PRODUCTION 1 P ro d , a cco u n ta n t M o n ey p en n y G rip (C a irn s) Ja ck L e ster th e p ro ta g o n ist always w ins ag ain st greatServ ices/ G ill M cK in lay G rips asst (C a irn s) G ary S h earsm ith o d d s, w ith o u t g u n s, in h er fig h t against

BEYOND MY REACH A ccts assistant L ian e L ee C o stu m e d esign er R o se C h o n g o rg an ized in tern a tio n a l crim e and terro r-

E x e cu tiv e p rod . P e te r B o y le 1st asst d irecto r C h ris W eb b S tan d b y w ard robe G ail M ayes ism .

P ro d u ce r F ra n k H o w so n 2 n d asst d irecto r H en ry O sb o rn e M a k e-u p artist L lo yd Jam es

W riters F ra n k H o w so n 3rd asst d irecto r M aria Phillips H air V ivian R u sh b ro o k THE MAGIC RIDDLEP h ilip D alk in C o n tin u ity L in d a Ray P ro d , d esign er B rian D u stin g P ro d . c o . Y o ram G ross F ilm Stu d io

D ire c to r D a n B u rstall C a stin g A liso n B a rre tt C astin g A rt d irecto r H u g h B ateu p D ist. co . B ey o n d In te rn a tio n a l G ro u p

L in e p ro d u cer B a rb i T a y lo r C am era o p era to r D avid W illiam so n Prop s bu yer R o llan d Pike P ro d u ce r Y o ram G ross

P h o to g ra p h y P e te r B ilco ck F o c u s puller Jo h n P la tt S e t d resser H am ish A ld erso n -H ick s D ire c to r Y o ram G ross

P ro d . E x e cu tiv e L y n n H o w so n C lap p er/ lo ad er R ich ard Bradshaw C o lin R o b in so n Scrip tw riters Y o ram G ross

P ro d . M a n a g e r L esley Park er K ey grip R ay B ro w n S tan d b y props D aryl P o rte r L eo n a rd L e e

C 11 N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 69

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M u sic G u y G ross E d itin g assistant R a j O ak ley

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Prod , m an ager R o d L ee A ctio n v eh icle co o rd . G era ld K n ig h t

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Prod , co m p an y T h e D elin q u en ts P / L S h o o tin g sto ck A gfa

D ist. co m p an y G rea ter U n io n C am era eq u ip m en t Sam u elso nP rod ucers A lex C u tler F ilm Services A ustralia P ty L td

M ich ael W ilco x C o m p le tio n gu aranto rs T h e C o m p le tio nD ire c to r C h ris T h o m so n B o n d C o . In e .

Scrip tw riters M a c G u d g eo n C a st: Kylie M in o g u e (L o la ) , C h arlie S ch la t­D o ro th y H e w e tt ter (B ro w n ie ), D esiree S m ith (M av is), T o d d

L e x M arin o s B o y ce (L y le ) , A n g ela P u n ch M c G re g o rProd , co n su lta n t C lay F ro h m an (M rs L o v e ll) , L y n e tte C u rra n (M rsBased o n novel by C rien a R o h a n H a n se n ), M elissa Ja ffer (A u n t W estb u ry ),P h o to g rap h y A n drew L esn ie B ru n o Law ren ce (B o su n ).S o u n d reco rd ist Paul B rin ca t S y n o p s is : S e t in th e F ifties , T h e D e lin ­E d ito r Jo h n S c o tt q u en ts is a love sto ry th a t follow s th e g ro w ­P ro d , d esigner L au ren ce E astw o o d in g re lation sh ip betw een L o la and B ro w n ie ,C o m p o ser D avid B o w ie tw o y o u n g teen ag ers o n th e ru n .E xecu tiv e producers G reg C o o te

Jo h n T a rn o ff DOT IN SPACEG rah am Burke P ro d , co m p an y Y o ram G ross F ilm

L in e p rod u cer Iren e D o b so n S tu d io P ty. L td .Prod , co o rd in a to r S h aro n M ille r P ro d u cer Y o ram G rossProd , m an ager R osslyn A b em e th y D ire c to r Y o ram G rossU n it m an ager Phil U rq u h a rt Scrip tw riter Jo h n P alm erL o ca tio n m anagers C o lin O d dy A ssociate p ro d u cer San d ra G ross

Jo h n W atso n A n im atio n d irecto r A th o l H en ryProd , secretary R e b e cca C o o te M u sic G u y C ro ssProd , a cco u n tan ts Lea C o llin s P ro d , supervisor Je a n e tte T o m s

D ia n n e Brow n P ro d , m an ag er R o d L e eBase liaison T rish W allace A sst, ed ito r S te p h en H ayes1st asst d irecto r C o lin F le tc h e r L e n g th 8 0 m in u tes2 n d asst d irecto r T o b y Pease G auge 3 5 m m3rd asst d irecto r E m m a S ch o fie ld C a s t : R o b y n M o o re , K e ith S c o tt .C o n tin u ity Jack ie Sullivan S y n o p s is : D o t finds h er w ay in to an A m eri­P ro d u cers’ assistant R e b e cca C o o te can spaceship w h ich lands h er o n a w artorn

C astin g F o rca st (M ich ae l Lynch p lan et o f R o u n d s and Squ ares.R ae D av idson )

E xtras castin g Jan e O ’H ara HUNTINGU n it assistant G abrie lle D u n n E x e c , p ro d u cer P e te r B o y leF o cu s p uller C o lin D ea n P ro d u cer F ran k H o w so nC lap p er load er Lyddy V a n G yen D ire c to r F ran k H o w so nKey grip R o b y n M o rg a n Scrip tw riter F ra n k H o w so nA sst grip R o b b ie van A m stel P h o to g rap h y D avid C o n n e llG affer S im o n L ee D a n B u rstallT h ird electrics P e te r Bu shb y L in e p ro d u cer B a rb i T a y lo rF o u rth electrics G len C o u rt P ro d , execu tive L y n n H o w so nB o o m o p erato r A lex P ato n Prod , m an ager Lesley P arkerA rt d irector R o b R o b in so n Prod , co -o rd in a to r D e b o ra h Sam uelsA sst art d irectors D iaan W a jo n F in an ce B e lin d a W illiam s

T im F errier A cco u n ts assistant C h ristin e H o d g so nM ich elle M cG a h ey Assist, to exec. p rod . A n n e C ash in

C o stu m e design er B ru ce Fin layson R e cep tio n is t A n n e tte N evillM ak e-up Ju d y Lovell L o ca tio n m an ag er Jo h n S h u rA sst h air/ m ak e-up Y v on n e Savage U n it m an ag er H am ish A ld erso n -H ick sC o stu m e supervisor San di C ich e llo 1st asst, d irecto r Jo h n P o w d itchW ard ro b e asst M arilyn B re n t 2 n d asst, d irecto r B r e tt P op p lew ellS tan d b y w ard robe Ju lie B a rto n 3rd asst, d irecto r R o b V isserProp s buyer D avid M cK ay P ro d u ctio n / u n it ru n n er L isa H o h e n fe lsS tan d b y props Jo h n O sm o n d M / u p W / R van driver Pau l E g a nSpecial effects R ay F o w ler A rtist van driver D avid H ollo w ayC h oreo g rap h y L o rry d ’E rco le C o n tin u ity Je n n i T o s iS e t d eco ra to r Lissa C o o te F o c u s Pu ller G reg R yanS ce n ic artists R ay Pedler C lap p er/ lo ad er T e rry H ow ells

P e te r C ollias C am era a tta c h m e n t W arik Law ren ceC arp en ters D rew Y o u n g U n d erw a ter p h o to g . Ian Jo n e s

G ary W ilson A ssistant D av id Lin dseyD ave Franks S o u n d reco rd ist Jo h n R o w ley

B ru ce F le tc h e r B o o m o p era to r C h ris to p h er R o la n dS e t co n stru c tio n Phil W o rth G affer R o b Y o u n gA sst ed ito r L iz G o ld fin ch B e s t bo y P e te r M o lo n e yM u sical co o rd in a to r C h ristin e G en n e o p erato r R o y P r itch e tt

W o o d ru ff G rip Ia n B en allackS e t finishers D ave D riffin G rips assistant A rth u r M an o usak is

D esm o n d K een a S tan d b y w 'ardrobe A p h ro d ite K o n d o sW ay n e T ru c e W a rd ro b e co -o rd M a rg o t L in dsay

D ia lo g u e ed ito r G reg Be ll S tan d b y w ard ro be Jea n n ie C a m ero n

70 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

M a k e-u p A m an d a R o w b o tto m S y n o p s is : A ce leb ra tio n o f h um an ity , w is­ M o rr iso n , Jo a n C ard en . D ist. co m p an y R P T AL lo y d Jam es d o m and th e spirit o f o ld p eop le . S y n o p s is : A series o f d o cu m en taries ab o u t: P ro d u ce r D o n F ea th e rsto n e

H a ir Pam M u rp h y C h o reo g ra p h er, G raem e M u rp h y ; W riter, D ire c to r D o n F ea th e rsto n eJay L ie b o w itz HANDMAIDENS AND BATTLEAXES T o m K eneally ; C o m p o se r, P e te r Scu lt- Scrip tw riter A lan Siev ew rig h t

P ro d u ctio n d esign er Jo n D o w d in g P ro d , com p an y Silver Film s h o rp e ; Ja z z v irtu o so , Jam es M o rr iso n ; A ssoc, p ro d u cer M artin G uinnessA rt d irecto r B e rn a d e tte W y n ack P ro d u cer R osalin d G illespie A rtist, B r e tt W h ite ley ; and O p era S in g er, L ab o ra to ry A tlabProp s buyers K eith H a n sco m b e D ire c to r R o salin d G illespie Jo a n C ard en . L ab liaison K erry Jen k in

D an ielle C o n ro y Scrip tw riter R osalin d G illespie B u d g et 5 3 8 2 ,0 0 0S e t dresser V ic to r ia R ow ell P h o to g rap h y Lau rie M c ln n e s INTRODUCING THE CAFETERIA L e n g th 5 5 m insS tan d b y props B rian L an g S o u n d reco rd ist Bron w y n M u rp h y IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME G auge 1 6 m mA rm o u rer/ S p fx F ilm G un s P ty L td E d ito r D ia n e Priest P ro d , co m p an y M assive M ed ia & S y n o p sis : F ilm a b o u t Sir R o b e rt H elp m an n .

S a fety / stu n ts N ew G en era tio n S tu n ts P ro d , designers E d ie K urzer E n te rta in m en tO ffice r A rch ie R o b e rts D ian n e R eyn olds D ist. co m p an y M assive M ed ia 8c UNDER SOUTHERN SKIESC aterers K eith F ish C o m p o ser F elicity F o x x E n te rta in m en t Prod , co m p an y O u r S ec re t A ustralia

T r io C a te rin g Prod , m an ager A d rien n e Parr P ro d u cer C ra ig R eard o n D ist. co . B ey o n d In tern a tio n a l G rou pC a te rin g assistant K en M c G re g o r Prod , assistant Jo a n n a Frew D ire c to r C ra ig R eard o n P ro d u cer M ark F a lz o nPu b licity L io n e l M id fo rd 1 st asst d irecto r E liz a b eth S tatis Scrip tw riter S tep h en D o w n es D ire c to r M ich ael E d olsStills p h o to g ra p h e r G reg N oak es C am era assistant F elicity Surtees Prod , assistant M ich elle R oyal S y n o p s is : T ak es th e view er o n a jo u rn e y o fE d ito r Philip R eid G affer Jam ie E g an P ro d u ce r’s asst Sh aro n T h o rn e discovery and exp lores h ow m an lives andA sst, ed ito r P eter M c B a in M ak e-u p A n g ela Bo d in i L ig h tin g cam era D arryl Fou lds m oves w ith in his fragile en v iro n m en t byE d g e n u m b ere r P e te r T h o rn to n T it le design er L eigh W h itm o re C am era assistant M a tth ew R o m an is co m b in in g th e beauty and un iqu en ess o fS o u n d ed ito r C ra ig C arter B u d g et 5 1 9 8 ,0 0 0 M ak e-up V iv M acgillicu ddy o u r p lan t life w ith th e natural e lem en ts th atD ia lo g u e ed ito r Jam es H arvey L e n g th 5 2 m ins L e n g th 1 0 m in utes created th is vast land we call A ustralia.C astin g G reg Apps G auge 16m m S h o o tin g sto ck B V U

L iz M u llin ar & A ssociates S h o o tin g sto ck K odak C a s t : M ark M itch e ll, K im G yn gell WITH FLYING COLOURSC a s t : Jo h n Savage (M ich a e l B e rg m a n ), S y n o p s is : A film a b o u t h ow n ursin g deve- S y n o p sis : Comedy Co.mpanÿ s M ark M itch - Prod , com p an y A F T R SK erry A rm stro n g (M ich e lle H a rris), Jeffrey land d em an d in g professio n . T h is has led to ell show s fo o d service s ta ff h ow to im prove E x e c , p rod u cer W illiam F itzw aterT h o m a s (L arry H a rr is), R e b e cca R ig g a crisis in th e professio n w orldw ide. th e n u trition al value o f th eir foo d s th ro u g h D ire c to r Sara H o u re z(D e b b ie M c C o rm ic k ) , Rhys M c C o n n o - a specially designed p rog ram . C am era o p erato r C h ris Fraserch ie (M r S to c k to n ) , Ian S c o tt (H o lm e s ), S te p h en W h itta k er (R o b e r ts ) , G uy Pearce (S h a rp ), N ich o las B e ll (P ig g o tt ) , S tacey V a lk e n b u rg (Y o u n g M ic h e lle ) .

DOCUMENTARIES

CHOCOLATES, GIANTS AND PEACHES ROALD DAHL LIVE IN MELBOURNE

P ro d , co m p an y T V E d P ro d u ctio n s/ M in . o f E d u ca tio n V icto ria

P ro d u ce r Lily S te in e rD ire c to r L ily S te in erC am era N o el P en nA u d io A n th o n y A rtm an nE d ito rs M ark W illiam s

Lily S te in erP ro d , assistants Jay n e C atterin a

Ju d i L ath amS y n o p s is : T h is series o f th ree p rogram s w as reco rd ed live at th e D allas B ro o k s H all d u rin g R o a ld D a h l’s re ce n t visit to M e l­b o u rn e . H e recalls an ecd o tes , reads from his b o o k s , and answ ers qu estio n s from th e ch ild ren in th e aud ien ce .

COVER TO COVER - ROALD DAHLP ro d , co m p an y T V E d P ro d u ctio n s/

M in . o f E d u ca tio n V icto ria P ro d u ce r Lily S te in e rD ire c to r Lily S te in e rC am era N o el P en nA u dio A n th o n y A rtm an nE d ito rs M ark W illiam s

Lily S te in erP ro d , assistants Jayne C atterin a

Ju d i Lath amS y n o p s is : T h e ‘C o v er to C o v e r’ series looks at ch ild ren ’s au th o rs and illustrators. T h is p rog ram was reco rd ed d u rin g R o ald D a h l’s re ce n t visit to A ustralia.

DOWN FROM DARWINP ro d . co . O rd in ary M iracle P ictu res P ro d u cers B ru ce Ready

B re n to n H arris

IN MORAL PANICP ro d . co . C in ete l P ro d u ctio n s P / LD ist. co m p an y D ev illier-d on eg an

En terp rises U SA P ro d u cer Fran k H eim an sD ire c to r F ran k H eim an sScrip tw riter Paul R eaP h o to g rap h y Jo h n T h o rn to nS o u n d record ists G eo rg e W eis

H u g o D e V ries S y n o p s is : In Moral Panic exam ines the social h istory and p sych ology o f p u n ish ­m en t, co m p arin g A ustralian m eth o d s w ith th o se overseas.

INNOVATORS IN AUSTRALIAN MUSIC & ART(Working Title)

Prod , com p an y

D ist. co m p an yP ro d u cerD irecto rs

P h o tog rap h y

S o u n d reco rd ists

E d itors

C o m p o ser A ssoc, p rod u cer P ro d , co o rd in a to r P ro d , acco u n ta n t F o cu s pullers

D o n F eath ersto n e P ro d u ctio n s

R M D istrib u ters D o n F ea th ersto n e

M alco lm M c D o n a ld D o n F eath ersto n e

Patrick T a g g a rt Jo n O ssh er

C h ristin a W ilco x K im B atterh am

Ray H en m an P ie ter de V ries

Erika Addis M ax H en sser

D avid G lasser G ran t R o b e rts

R o b S talder Bron w yn M u rp h y

Suresh Ayyar T im W ellb u rn

Q u en tin Jo h n so n D avid M aitlan d D en ise H u n te r G raham T a rd if

M a rtin G uinness Ju d y F ea th ersto n e

A n n e C liffo rd -S m ith K ate D en n is

A ndrew B irbara

MARBURY... MORE THAN JUST A SCHOOLProd , co m p an y O rig in al Film sP ro d u cer S im o n L . E d h o u seD ire c to r S im o n L . E d h o u seP h o tog rap h y M ich ael Kelly

G erald T h o m p so n S im o n E d ho u se

P eter Felstead Kris N izam is

So u n d reco rd ists Kyriaki M arag ozid is D es Keneally M ik e B a la k o f

S im o n E d h o u se E d ito r T an ia N eh m eC o m p o ser T im o th y E d h o u seA sst ed ito r D eb o ra h V an G yenN eg . m atch in g C h ris R ow ell P ro d u ctio n s M u sic p erform ed by T im o th y E d h o u se So u n d ed ito r Y v on n e V an G yenM ix er P eter B ig g s (A B C A delaide)O p ticals C o lo rfilmT itle design er S im o n E d h o u seM ixed at A B C A delaideL ab o rato ry C o lo rfilmB u d g et S 1 3 0 ,0 0 0L e n g th 5 2 .5 m in utesG aug e 16 m m and o n e -in ch m asterS to ck A gfa X T 1 2 5 and X T 3 2 0C a s t : T h e p rincip al, M arg are t Lan g ley , and th e teach ers and stud en ts o f M arbu ry S ch o o l.S y n o p s is : M arbu ry was estab lished in 1 9 7 0 as an alternative sch o o l. T h e prim ary p ur­pose was to create re laxed and friendly learn in g co n d itio n s free o f p u n ish m en t. T h e film exam ines M arbu ry as it was seen in 1 9 7 1 and look s a t w h at th e sch o o l has achieved in th e 18 years since th en .

PARENT/TEACHER INTERVIEW SKILLSP ro d , com p an y T V E d P ro d u ctio n s/

M in . o f E d u ca tio n V icto ria P ro d u cer Lily S te in erD ire c to r Lily S te in erS y n o p s is : A dram a th at focuses o n co m -

E d ito rL e n g thG auge

Sara H o u re z 2 0 m in u tes

B e ta ca m to 1 "S y n o p s is : P eop le w ith d isabilities can co m p ete o n th e sam e level as th e rest o f th e co m m u n ity and achieve success. S o m e w ith flying co lou rs.

WORDS AND SILK (Formerly IN LANDS OF ESCAPE)

Prod u cers Jo h n C ru th ersPhilip T yndall

D ire c to r Philip T yndallScrip tw riter Philip T yn dallP h o to g rap h y B ren d an LavelleS o u n d reco rd ist G reg G u rr

Ray Bo selyE d ito r C ath erin e B irm in g h amA ssoc, p ro d u cer Jo a n n e B ellProd , co o rd in a to r T im o th y D oy leC am era assistants K atin a B o w ell

P eter F alk2 n d u n it p h otog rap h y P e te r F alkM u sic p erform ed by M o o n e e

V alley D rifters G erald M u rn an e

So u n d ed ito r R ay B o selyN arrato r G erald M u rn an eStill p h otog rap h y D avid P eterso n

Paul Sm ithG rap h ics D irk D e Bruy nM ix ed at F ilm So u n d tra ck A ustralia L a b o ra to ry C in evexB u d g et S I 3 0 ,0 0 0L e n g th 8 0 M in u tesG au g e 1 6 m mS h o o tin g sto ck F u jico lo rF in a n c in g C reativ e In itiativ es Prog ram

F ilm V icto ria C reative D ev e lo p m en t

A ustralian F ilm C o m m issio n S y n o p s is : T h e real and im aginary w orld o f A ustralian w riter G erald M u rn an e.

ZAFARI ART/WHAT IS ART? (WORKING TITLE)

D ire c to r T o n y L e M aistre F elicity Surtees m u n icatio n skills necessary fo r successful P ro d , com p an y Feral F ilm s and

Scrip tw riter M ik e S ex to n A sst, ed itors D an ielle W iessn er in tera ctio n d u rin g p a ren t/ tea ch e r in ter­ O rig in al Film s

P h o to g ra p h y B ru ce Ready D im ity G reg so n views in skills. P ro d u cer S im o n L . E d h o u se

P ro d , m an ag er B re n to n H arris Steve W o rlan d D ire c to r S im o n L . E d h o u se

L e n g th 5 0 m ins Sou lla A lexan drou PARENTS HELPING CHILDREN TO READ Scrip tw riters S im o n L . E d h o u se

G auge 1 6 m m to 1 " v ideo N e g m atch in g N eg th in k P ro d , co m p an y T V E d P ro d u ctio n s/ H arry P h o to co p y

S y n o p s is : A lo o k a t th e to p e n d o f A ustralia So u n d ed ito r D an ielle W iessn er M in . o f E d u ca tio n V icto ria F ro m an orig inal

and rem n an ts o f W o rld W ar I I . (G ra em e M u rp hy P ro d u cer Lily S te in e r idea by S im o n E d h o u sefilm o nly ) D ire c to r L ily S te in e r H arry P h o to c o p y

GIANTS OF TIME L ab o rato ry A tlab S y n o p s is : A dram a th a t aim s to provide M ich a el P o ly ester

P ro d , co m p an y Ju n ip e r Film s L a b . liaison K erry Jen k in p arents and relatives w ith useful insights P h o to g rap h y G erald T h o m p so n

D ist. co m p an y Ju n ip e r Film s B u d g et 5 1 .3 m illion and ideas fo r h elp in g ch ild ren w h o are M ich a el Kelly

P ro d u ce r Jo h n D avy T ristram L e n g th 6 x 5 5 m in utes learn ing to read. S im o n E d h o u se

D ire c to r Ian Jam es W ilson G auge 1 6 m m S o u n d reco rd ist M ik e B a k a lo fS crip tw riter N ad in e A m ad io S to ck K odak 7 2 9 1 / 7 2 9 2 / 7 2 9 7 TALES OF HELPMANN E d ito r S im o n E d h o u se

P h o to g ra p h y G arry M au n d er C a s t : G raem e M u rp h y , T o m K eneally , P ro d , co m p an y D o n F ea th ersto n e P ro d , design er Z afari A rtS o u n d reco rd ist R alp h S teele P e te r S cu lth o rp e , B r e tt W h iteley , Jam es P ro d u ctio n s Pty L td C o m p o se r S im o n E d h o u se

C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 71

1st asst d irecto r T a n ia RosenzvveigN eg . m atch in g C h ris R ow ell

P rod u ctio n sM u sic p erform ed by W ip e-o u ts

Zafari A rt F o o tstep s

Still p h otog rap h y M ark ProcessA n im atio n M ich ael Po ly esterT it le design er O rig in al F ilm s/ Z afari A rtL ab oratory L ab .lia iso n B u d g et L en g th G aug eS h o o tin g s to ck

V F L B ru ce Braun

S 5 4 ,0 0 0 3 0 - 4 0 m ins

1 6 m m and o n e -in ch video 7 2 9 1 and 7 2 9 7

C a s t : M ich ael P o ly ester, H arrv P h o to co p y , e x -m a jo r Pete S m ith (th em se lv es), Cvril C o lo u r , D ave th e Plastic o n e , M iro D ver, P e ter B ro ad cast, D eb o ra h H attam . S y n o p s is : A n exam in atio n o f radical cu lt artists H arr ,' P h o to co p y and M ich ael Poly­ester o f Zafari A rt. T h e film d o cu m en ts th e ir co lou rfu l and o ften o u trag eo u s e x ­p lo its, en d in g w ith th e blo w in g up o f an A m erican car painted in U S m ilitary c o l­ours in th e m iddle o f th e Australian desert. Zafari targets th e m edia and A u st/ U S rela­tio ns w ith co m ic orig inality .

s s

MYTHS & LEGENDSP rod , com pany A ustralian F ilm ,

T elev ision 8c R ad io S ch o o lD ist. com p an y A ustralian F ilm ,

T elev ision 8c R adio S ch o o lProd u cer Ju lie H an n afo rdD ire cto r D an a RaysonScrip tw riters Sylvia Jo h n so n

D ana RaysonPhotography' D an a RaysonSo u n d recordists M ark C orn ish

Paul N eesonE d ito r W end y C h an dlerProd , designer T rish RyanC o m p o ser N S W C o nserv ato rium

o f M u sicE x e c , p rod u cer T o m JeffreyA ssoc, p rod u cer E lisabeth K n ig h tProd , m anager Ju lie H an n afo rd1st asst d irector Bron w yn C o u p eC astin g Jo y Sargan tC am era o p erato r P eter B o ro shC o stu m e designer SuskaM ak e-up V anessa Brow n

C h lo eM u sical d irecto r W illiam M o tz in gM u sic p erform ed by N SW

C onserv ato riu m o f M u sicStill p h o to g rap h }’ K aren B o rg erA n im ation D ana RavsonS tu d ios A ustralian F ilm , T elev ision 8 :

R adio S ch o o lL ab oratory C o lo rfilm Ply L tdL ab . liaison M artin H oyleB u d g et S 1 4 5 ,0 0 0L en g th 10 m inutesG auge 3 5 m mS h o o tin g sto ck FujiC a s t : Edw ard Jow sev (C h ris to ) , Luke C arroll ( Ja c k ) , Sh an e T ic k n e r (H a m ish ), D errin Seale (C h a rles).S y n o p s is : C h risto and Jack are th e b est o f friends. T o g e th e r th ey exp lore and treasure h u n t in th e ir fantasy p layground - T h e W asteland . W h en C harles and H am ish attack th e boys and escape w ith th eir lo o t, Ja ck co n so les his y ou n g friend w ith a stop,' based on an aborig inal leg en d . T h e story co m es to life th ro u g h C h ris to ’s im ag ina­tio n and C harles and H am ish suffer th e co n se q u en ce o f th eir greed .

THE PURSUEDP rod , co m p an y Australian F ilm ,

T elev ision & R ad io S ch o o l D ist. co m p an y A ustralian F ilm ,

T elev ision & R adio S ch o o l P ro d u cer Bron w yn T h o m p so nD ire c to r R ex C ram p h o rnScrip tw riters R ex C ram p ho rn

K im Spinks

72

Based o n story by H o ra c io Q u iro g aP h o to g rap h y K ym V aitiekusS o u n d reco rd ist Ricky7 PriceE d ito r C arm en G alanProd , d esign er M elo d y C o o p e rC o m p o ser Jim C o tte rProd , m an ag er M ariel B ero s1st asst d irecto r D o n C o la n to n io2 n d asst d irecto r D eb o ra h G reen3rd asst d irecto r S u e S c o ttC o n tin u ity M o jg a n K hademC astin g co n su ltan t Sh aun a W o lfso nL ig h tin g cam era Kym V aitiekusC am era assistant T im T h o m asKey grip S tu art G reenG affer Ian Bo sm anB o o m o p erato r M ark C o rn ishM ak e-u p T in a C o w p er-H illW ard ro b e M elod y C o o p e rStan db y props T an ia C re ig h to nSpecial effects Steve C o u rtley /

C in effectsC arp en ter K en M an n in gA rm ou rer B o b C o lbvE d itin g assistants N ich olas C o leM ix er R icky PriceStill p h otog rap h y D avid KirkB e st boy G e o ff D ow n esL ab oratory A tlabLab . liaison K erry Jen k inB u d g et S 9 0 ,6 1 0L e n g th 3 0 m insG aug e 16m mS h o o tin g sto ck F u jiC a s t : G reg Saunders (T h e o ) , C o lin Ba- troun ey (L u ca s), G illian Jo n e s (R a ch e l) . S y n o p s is : A m an ’s d elusion th at he is bein g follow ed attracts a n o th er m an to follow h im . T h e co m p licated g am e th at ensues binds the pursuer to th e pursued until it is hard to tell w hich is w hich - a stro n g need creates and sustains an o p p osite need - the m adness is co n tag io u s.

SPARKSProd , com p an y A ustralian F ilm ,

T elev ision & R ad io S ch o o l P ro d u cer Prue A dam sD ire c to r R o b e rt K lenn erScrip tw riter C ath erin e Z im dahlBased on idea by C ath erin e Z im dahl

P h o tog rap h y Kriv S tend ersProd , design er Stavros E fth y m iou1st asst d irecto r Bronw yn T h o m p so nC astin g Jo y Sargan tL ig h tin g cam era Kriv S tend ersC o stu m e d esigner Stavros E fth y m iouS ou n d ed ito r M ich ael W eb sterM ix er M ich ael W eb sterT id e design er Stavros E fth y m iouM ixed at A F T R SB u d g et S I 7 7 ,3 7 4L e n g th 3 0 m inutesG auge 16 m mS y n o p s is : C h ao s, in som n ia, labels, cups, m ed icatio n , in stitu tio n alisatio n and opera - Sparks is a jo u rn ey th ro u g h life in a halfway house for y ou n g people w ho have been in psychiatric hospitals.

FILM AUSTRALIA PTY LTD

ARMY RESERVE EMPLOYER MOTIVATION

G au g e V id eo tap eS y n o p s is : A v ideo to explain to em p loyers th e b en efits o f en co u ra g in g th eir em p lo y ­ees to serve in th e D efe n ce Reserves.

THE BOMB IN YOUR BACKYARD Prod , com p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td P ro d u cer G e o ff B arn esR esearch er E m m a G o rd o nE x e c , p rod u cer Ja n e t BellP ro d , m an ager C atr io n a M acm illanProd , secretary Ja n e B e n so nProd , acco u n ta n t W ald em ar W aw rvzniuk

M a rk etin g / p ro m o tio n Jo h n Sw indells Publicity' Ja n e G lenL e n g th 4 x 1 h o u rS y n o p s is : A n essay series on b lin d p re ju ­dice and justifiab le fear.

COLOURSProd , com p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty' L td D ist. com p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty' L td P ro d u cer Paul H um fressD ire c to r Jo h n M ich ael RogovvskiScrip tw riter Jo h n M ich ael Rogovvski F ro m an idea by Jo h n M ich ael Rogovvski P h o to g rap h y A like A tw ellSo u n d reco rd ist D avid W h iteE d ito r G erald ine C ro w nC o m p o ser G uy G rossC h oreo g rap h y V icto ria T ay lo r

S tep h en PageE x e c , p ro d u cer Paul H um fressProd , m an ager R o n H an n amP rod secretary L o ri W allaceProd , acco u n ta n t E lizab eth C larkeProd , assistant M ad elin e M urray1st asst d irecto r A drian PickersgillC am era assistant P e ter C o lem anKey grip P eter D o igG affer Jo n a th o n H u g h esA rt d irecto r G ary W h itelawM ak e-up Steven KellyW ard ro b e C laren ce ChaiT e c h , d irecto r M a tth ew D o rnV arilite o p era to r P e te r L o th ia nPublicity7 Ja n e G lenM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indellsC aterin g T h e K aterin g C om p anyL e n g th 2 5 m insG auge 1 " videoC a st:V ic to r ia T a y lo r , S tep h en Page (D a n c ­ers)S y n o p s is : M an lives in a w orld o f lig h t and co lo u r. T h is film will focus o n th e various h um an a ttribu tes o f co lo u r, using d an ce , m usic, lig h tin g and sets.

COMMUNITY SERVICES & HEALTH Prod , com p an y F ilm Australia Pty L td P rod u cer Ja n e t BellScrip tw riter S tep h en R am seyProd , m an ager C atr io n a M acm illanProd , secretary Jan e B en so nProd , acco u n ta n t W aldem ar

W aw ryzniukProd , assistant Jan e B en so nPublicity' Jan e G lenM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indellsL e n g th 5 x 5 m insS y n o p s is : Five fiv e-m in u te program s for th e D ep artm en t o f C om m u nity7 Services and H ealth a b o u t polyd rug use.

EVERYBODYP ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A u stralia Pty7 L td E x e c , p ro d u cer Pau l H u m fressD ire c to r R ich a rd R yanScrip tw riter R ich ard R yanP h o to g rap h y Ju lian Pen n yS o u n d reco rd ist S id B u tterw o rthE d ito r R ay T h o m a sP ro d , co o rd in a to r V an essa B row nProd , m an ag er R o n H an n amU n it m an ag er A drian PickersgillL o ca tio n m an ag er N ich o las C o leProd , a cc o u n ta n t E liz a b eth C larke1st asst d irecto r A drian Pickersgill2 n d asst d irecto r E m m a G o rd o n3rd asst d irecto r N ich o las C o leC ontinuity ' S ian F a to u ro sC astin g F a ith M artinL ig h tin g cam era Ju lian Pen n yC am era o p era to r C allum M cF a rla n eK ey grip G ar)7 L in co lnG affer Jo n a th a n H u g h esE lectr ic ian C h ris R o d m anB o o m o p era to r N o e l Q u inA rt d irecto r M ad ele in e M u rrayM ak e-u p Lesley R ouvravH airdresser L esley R ouvrayW ard ro b e M ad ele in e M u rrayProp s L ea n n e C o rn ishA sst ed ito r N ig e l M c K en z ieS tu n ts co o rd in a to r B e rn ie L e d g erPublicity7 Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g Jo h n Sw indellsC a te rin g K aterin g C o m p anyL a b o ra to ry C o lo rfilmL a b . liaison M a rtin H o y leL e n g th 1 x 3 0 m in u tesG aug e 1 6 m mS h o o tin g sto ck E a stm a n co lo rC a s t : Paul S m ith , R ich ard H u g g e tt , L isa H en sley , R a ch e l B e ck , R an i L o ck la n d , A lex M o rc o s , M ich ael B u tch e r , C ecelia Y ates. S y n o p s is :T o provide th e C haplaincy branch o f th e A ustralian D efe n ce F o rc e w ith a co u n sellin g film to p ro m o te discu ssion o n social issues and drug abuse.

HISTORY OF DISEASEProd , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P / LD ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P / LScrip tw riter D r N o rm a n Sw anE x e c , p ro d u cer Ja n e t B ellProd , m an ag er C atr io n a M acm illanProd , secretary Ja n e B en so nProd , a cco u n ta n t W aldem ar

W aw ryzniukPublicity7 Ja n e G lenM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indellsL e n g th 4 x 1 h ou rS y n o p s is : A lo o k at th e im p o rta n t ro le disease has played in h um an h isto ry , even m ore im p o rtan t th an th e art o f h ealin g o r the d ev elop m en t o f m ed icin e itself.

HOW WONDERFULProd , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty7 L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty7 L td

L y n n H eg artyD ire c to r Scrip tw riter Scrip t ed ito r E x e c , p rod u cer Prod , m an ag er

L y n n H eg arty H e le n S teele

B ru ce M o ir Jo h n Russell

Prod , com pany Film Australia Pty' L td P ro d , secretar}7 K ath y G ra n tD ist. com pany Film A ustralia Pty7 L td ERNIE DINGO’S AUSTRALIA Prod , acco u n ta n t S im o n L e n th enP rod u cer S o n ia H um p h rey Prod , com p an y Film A ustralia Pty’ L td Publicity7 Ja n e G lenD ire cto r M a tt Scully D ist. company- Film A ustralia Pty7 L td M ark etin g M a rtin W o o dScrip tw riter R ich ard Ryan P rod ucers M au rice M u rp hy L e n g th 5 8 m in u tesP h o to g rap h }’ R o ss K ing E rn ie D in g o G aug e 1 6 m mS o u n d record ists K en H a m m o n d D ire cto r M au rice M u rp hy S y n o p s is : A n o ffb ea t and co m ic lo o k at

R ick C reaser Scriptw riters R ich ard W alley p reg n ane}7 in th e life o f a m o d ern careerE d ito r Ja cq u elin e W alker E rn ie D in g o w om an.E x e c , p rod u cer Paul H um fress E x ec , p rodu cer Ja n e t Be llP rod , m anager R o n H an n am Prod , m anager C atrio n a M acm illan INTERVIEW OF A SUSPECTProd , secretary L o ri W allace Prod , secretary Jan e B e n so n P ro d , com p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L tdProd , acco u n ta n t E lizab eth Clarke Prod , acco u n ta n t W aldem ar W aw rzyniuk D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L tdProd , assistant K atrina Fanscali Publicity Ja n e G len P ro d u cer Son ia H u m p h reyC am era assistant P e te r C o lem an M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells Scrip tw riter R ich ard RyanM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells S y n o p s is : O u r cu ltu re is y ou r cu ltu re . A M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indellsL ab oratory V id eo F ilm C o m p any series o f co m ed y b lacko u ts th a t E rn ie calls S y n o p s is : A film co m m issio n ed by th eL a b . liaison M ark Farrow “vvhiteouts” . P rod u ced fo r th e D ep a rt­ M ilitary P o lice , design ed to in stru ct th o seL en g th 1 0 -1 2 m inutes m en t o f A b orig in al Affairs. new ly assigned to th e U n it in in terview in g

C 1 N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

te ch n iq u e s , ap p rop riate to th e m ilitary c ir­cu m sta n ces in w h ich th ey will b e applied .

KAKADU PUPPETS (working title)P ro d , co m p a n y F ilm A u stralia P ty L td D is t. co m p a n y F ilm A u stralia P ty L td D ire c to r M ich a e l B a lso nP h o to g ra p h y Jo h n H o sk in gS o u n d re co rd is t M a x H en sserE d ito r M ich a el B a lso nE x e c , p ro d u cers B ru ce M o ir

T ris tra m M iall P ro d , co o rd in a to r G len d a C a rp en ter P ro d , m an ag er Jo h n R ussellP ro d , secretary K ath y G ra n tP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t S im o n L e n th e nStill p h o to g ra p h y C a rm e n KyP u b lic ity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g M a rtin W o o dL a b o ra to ry V id e o F ilm C o m p an yL e n g th 5 0 m insG au g e 1 6 m mS y n o p s is : A d o cu m e n ta ry fo r te lev ision illu stra tin g th e M a r io n e tte T h e a tre o f A u stralia ’s innovative p u p p et play, Kakadu, fro m first draft to o p en in g n ig h t. In sp ired by B ill N e id je ’s b o o k , Kakaduman , th e p u p p et p lay, w ritten by A b o rig in a l p lay­w rig h t V iv ian W alk er , brin gs B ill N e id je ’s m essag e to th e stag e in a lively p ro d u ctio n aim ed a t a w ide fam ily au d ien ce .

LIGHTHOUSESP ro d , co m p an y F ilm A u stralia Pty L td D is t. co m p a n y F ilm A u stralia P ty L td R e se a rch e r Ia n W alk erF ro m an idea by M a ritim e O p eratio n s

D iv isio n - D ep a rtm en t o f T ra n sp o rt & C o m m u n ica tio n s

E x e c , p ro d u cer B ru ce M o irP ro d , m an ag er Jo h n RussellP ro d , secretary K ath y G ra n tP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t S im o n L e n th e nP u b lic ity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g M a rtin W o o dL e n g th 2 0 m in u tes

G a u g e 1 6 m mS y n o p s is : D o c u m en ta ry o n th e L ig h tsta - tio n sy stem , its te ch n o lo g y and h istory .

MANAGER ON THE CASE P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ire c to r R ich ard S a ttle rS crip tw riter S tev e Jo h n so nP ro d , d esig n er L o u e lla H atfieldE x e c , p ro d u cer Ja n e t BellP ro d , m an ag er C a tr io n a M acm illan F lo o r m an ag er K atrina FanscaliP ro d , secretary Ja n e B e n so nP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t W ald em ar W aw rzyniuk

P ro d , assistant/ v ision sw itch er M a rg o Pu lsfordD ire c to r ’s assistant Ju lie t PhillipsL ig h tin g cam era Jo n a th o n H u g h esM a k e-u p M ich elle M yersW a rd ro b e Ju lie t PhillipsP u b lic ity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g Jo h n Sw indellsC a te rin g T h e K aterin g C o m p an yS tu d io s F ilm A ustraliaO B facilities H o y ts T elev isio nL e n g th 15 m in u tesG au g e 1 " v ideoC a s t : C aro l W illesee (case m a n a g er), S te ­ven T a n d y (a d m in is tra to r), V ick i L u ke (re h a b co u n se llo r) , Russell C ro w e (s to re - m a n / em p lo y ee)S y n o p s is : A film fo r C O M C A R E w h ich is a h u m o ro u s lo o k at h ow th e new case m an ag er system will w ork in C o m m o n ­w ealth ag en cies to adm in ister reh ab ilita ­tio n p rog ram s fo r in ju red w orkers.

MILITARY POLICEP ro d , co m p an y D ist. company- P ro d u ce r S crip tw riter E x e c , p rod u cer P ro d , m an ag er P ro d , secretary

F ilm A ustralia Pty L td F ilm A ustralia P ty L td

Paul H um fress R ich ard Ryan

Paul H um fress R o n H an n am

L o ri W allace

P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t E liz a b eth C larkeP u b licity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g Jo h n Sw indellsL e n g th 2 x 2 0 m in u tesS y n o p s is : T w o 2 0 -m in u te film s design ed to in stru ct th o se new ly assigned to th e un it in in terview ing and in terro gation techniques ap p rop riate to th e m ilitary circu m stan ces in w h ich th ey will be applied.

MORTGAGEProd , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ire c to r B ill B e n n e ttScrip tw riter B ill B e n n e ttP h o to g ra p h y S teve A rn oldS o u n d reco rd ist M ax H en sserE d ito r Sara B e n n e ttE x e c , p ro d u cer B ru ce M o irP ro d , co o rd in a to r Jo A n n e M cG o w a n P ro d , m an ag er H ilary M ay

F ilm A ustralia p rod , m an ag er Jo h n RussellProd , secretary K athy G ran tP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t E liz a b eth A n d erso n ,

R eel A cco u n ta n ts

1st asst d irecto r N ikki L o n g2 n d asst d irecto r Ifca D rag icevicC o n tin u ity A lison G oo d w inC astin g F o rcastL ig h tin g cam era Steve A rn oldC am era assistant A drien Seffrin2 n d u n it p h o to g rap h y Jo h n L o m ax

T o n y W ilsonG affer Steve C arterB o o m o p era to r M ark V an K o olW ard ro b e R u th B raceg ird leA sst ed ito r M ary Jan e S t. V in c en t

W elchN eg m atch in g C h ris R ow ellM u sic co m p o sed by M ich ael A tk in sonS o u n d ed ito r M ary Jan e S t. V in c en t

W elchStill p h o to g rap h y Jim T o w n leyP u blicity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g M a rtin W o o d

C a te rin g G erry B illin g s/ T h e S h o o tin gParty

M ix ed at F ilm A ustraliaL a b o ra to ry A tlab A ustraliaL a b . liaison Ian RussellL e n g th 9 4 m insG aug e 1 6 m mC a st: D oris Y ounane (Sh aro n R eev es), Brian V rien d s (S tev e R e ev es), B ru ce V en ab les (T h e B u ild er), Paul C o o la h a n (T h e D ev e l­o p er).S y n o p s is : A real-life lo o k at th e A ustralian D ream o f h o m e ow nersh ip .

NATIONAL PARKS (working title)Prod , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty L td D ire c to r M ark G ou ldS crip t/ research M ark G ou ldE x e c , p ro d u cer B ru ce M o irProd , m an ag er Jo h n RussellProd , secretary K athy G ra n tProd , a cc o u n ta n t S im o n L e n th enPu b licity Ja n e G lenM a rk etin g M artin W o o dL e n g th 2 0 m in utesG aug e B etacamS y n o p s is : A v ideo sh ow in g th e types, aim s and uses o f A u stralia ’s N atio n al Parks.

NELL IN NUGGET ENDP ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td P ro d u cer Ja n e t BellD ire c to r R ich ard S a ttle rScrip tw riter K ath erin e T h o m so nP ro d , d esign er L o u ella H atfieldP ro d , m an ag er C atr io n a M acm illanF lo o r m an ag er K atrina FancsaliV isio n m ixer M a rg o t PulsfordProd , secretary Ja n e B en so nProd , a cco u n ta n t W ald em ar W aw ryzniuk

D ire c to r ’s asst Ju lie t PhillipsC astin g / research Ju lie t PhillipsM a k e -u p / H a ir M ich elle M yersP u p p e t/ se t co n stru c tio n A lan M a n n in g

NEWMULTI-LANGUAGE

SERVICESUBTITLING • VOICE-OVER • TRANSLATION• 40 languages

Asian and European• Film and VideoPACIFIC SUBTITLING

INTERNATIONALTel. (02) 362 3750 Fax (02) 327 4908

c N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 7 3

P u blicity Jan e G len Synopsis: A n im ated v ideos fea tu rin g N o n i SPECIAL EDUCATION MAGAZINE THE UNFAIR GO?M a rk etin g Jo h n Sw indells H a z leh u rst to h elp p re-sch o o lers co p e w ith P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L tdC a te rin g K aterin g C o . h ea lth p roblem s. D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D ist. co m p an y F ilm A u stralia P ty L tdS tu d ios F ilm A ustralia P ro d u cer Paul H u m fress P ro d u ce r P au l H u m fressO B F acilities H o y ts T elev isio n A SENSE OF IDENTITY Scrip tw riter/ research Je b b y Phillips D ire c to r Ia n M u n roP o st P ro d u ctio n T ra m B ro ad cast P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td E x e c , p ro d u cer Paul H um fress Scrip tw riter C o n A n em o g ian n isL en g th 2 4 m in utes D ist. com p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td P u blicity Ja n e G len P h o to g rap h y Steve W in d o nG aug e 1 " v ideo P ro d u cer S o n ia H u m p h rey M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells D avid K nausC a s t : K im V a len tin e and p up p eteers: Sean R esearch er T ra cey M au rer L e n g th 3 0 m ins G reg L o w eSte in m u ller, A drian N o rm a n , M u rray R aine E x e c , p rod u cer Paul H um fress G au g e V id eo P resto n C lo th ie rand R o ss B ro w n in g . P ro d , m an ag er R o n H an n am Synopsis: A p rop o sed 3 0 -m in u te n o n ­ A lex M c P h e e

Synopsis: A p up p et dram a fo r th e A u stra­ M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells broad cast telev ision m ag azine to be dis­ S o u n d record ists B ro n w y n M u rp h ylian E le cto ra l C o m m issio n w hich explains L e n g th 3 0 - 4 0 m in u tes tr ib u ted to sch o o ls fo r y o u n g p eop le w ith D o n C o n n o llyth e p referen tia l v o tin g system to upper Synopsis: T h e ch a n g in g ro le o f A b orig in al co n versatio n al o r in tellectu a l d isabilities. L e o Sullivanprim ary sch o o l ch ild ren via a fan tastic v oy ­ w o m en and th e social dev elop m en ts against S c o tt M o n tg o m e ryage to an ab an d o n ed am u sem en t park. w h ich th ese ch an g es have o ccu rred . T h e TO ABSENT FRIENDS K en H a m m o n d

film aim s to ed u cate th e general p u b lic o n P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td E d ito rs R o b in A rch erPLAYMAKERS/MUSIC MAKERS th e im p o rtan t ro le and co m m u n ity dev el­ D ist. co m p an y F ilm A ustralia P ty L td D en ise H aslem

P ro d , co m p an y F ilm A ustralia Pty L td o p m en ts th a t have involved A b orig in al P ro d u cer Paul H um fress E x e c , p ro d u cer Pau l H u m fressP ro d u cer Ja n e t Bell w o m en and to give A b orig in al w o m en a D ire c to r P e te r M c L e a n P ro d , m an ag er R o n H an n amR esearch er M ary C o lb ert sense o f iden tity . Scrip tw riter Paula D aw son U n it m an ag er C o n A n em og ian n isP ro d , m an ag er C atrio n a M acm illan F ro m an idea by Paula D aw son P ro d , secretary L o ri W allaceProd , secretary Ja n e B en so n THE SNOWY • THE PEOPLE P h o to g rap h y R o ss K in g P ro d , a cco u n ta n t E liz a b eth C larkeProd , acco u n ta n t W aldem ar W aw ryzniuk BEHIND THE POWER S o u n d record ists H ow ard Spry N eg . m a tch in g K u t th e C ap er

P u blicity Ja n e G len P ro d , com p an y F ilm Australia R o d n ey S im m on s M u sical d irectors J im C o nw ayM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells D ist. com p an y F ilm Australia N o e l C u n n in g to n C o lin W a tso nL e n g th 2 series o f 4 x 2 0 m ins D ire c to r S te p h en Ram say E x e c , p rod u cer Paul H um fress S o u n d ed ito r G ary O ’G radyG auge V id eo / film B ased o n b o o k by Sio b h an M c H u g h P ro d , m anagers A lison W o th e rsp o o n E d itin g assistants H e le n M a rtinSynopsis: T w o series fo r upp er prim ary P h o to g rap h y Jo e l P e terso n R o n H an n am H a rrie te M c K e rnsch o o l ch ildren w h ich lo o k at th e w orld o f S o u n d reco rd ist R o b e rt S tald er P ro d , acco u n ta n t N eil C o u sin s M ixers G e o f f S t it tth eatre and m usic th ro u g h th e roles o f th e E d ito r D o u g la s H ow ard E liz a b eth C larke G eo rg e H a rtp ractition ers. E x e c , p rod u cer B ru ce M o ir P ro d , assistant M ich ael R o go w sk i N arrato r J im D o w n es

A ssoc, p rod u cer S io b h a n M c H u g h C am era assistants R o b y n P eterso n P u blicity Ja n e G lenPRE-SCHOOL HEALTH VIDEOS Prod , m an ager Jo h n Russell Jo h n S c o tt M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells

P ro d , co m p an y Film Australia Pty L td P ro d , secretary K athy G ran t G affer Jo n a th o n H u g h es L ab o rato ry A d ab A ustraliaY o ram G ross S tu d ios P ty L td Prod , assistant Jean M o y es Pu blicity Ja n e G len L ab . liaison K erri Jen k in s

D ist. com p an y Film A ustralia Pty L td Pu blicity Ja n e G len M ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells L e n g th 6 x 3 0 m in u tesR esearch er Ju d y M en cz e l M ark etin g M artin W o o d Synopsis: To Absent Friends traces th e G au g e 1 6 m mE x e c , p rod u cer Ja n e t Bell L e n g th 6 0 m in utes co n cep t and co n stru ctio n o fP au la D aw son ’s S h o o tin g sto ck E a stm a n co lo rP ro d , m an ag er C atrion a M acm illan G auge B etacam m o st re ce n t w ork , a fully fu n ctio n al bar- Synopsis: A p rop o sed series o f six p ro ­P ro d , a cco u n ta n t W aldem ar W aw ryzniuk A sst ed ito r M ark Perry ro o m . All reflective surfaces will b e h er gram s th a t w o u ld raise issues to in crease th e

Pu b licity Ja n e G len Synopsis: A television d o cu m en tary w hich h o lo g rap h ic im ag es, reco n stru c ted fro m a au d ien ce’s an x iety , m ake view ers aw are o fM ark etin g Jo h n Sw indells tells th e story o f th e p eop le w h o bu ilt th e past N ew Y e a r’s E v e event. T h e final envi­ th e m any w elfare p roblem s th a t ex ist andL e n g th V ariou s Sn ow y M o u n ta in s H y d ro -E lec tric Sch em e. ro n m en t is an exp lo ratio n o f m em o ry at su g g est alternative system s o f d ea lin g w ithG auge V id eo w ork and th e in fin ite quality o f tim e. th e p roblem s o f th e u n d erp riv ileg ed b o thC a s t : N o n i H azleh u rst w ith in A ustralia and overseas.

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74 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

UNIT PREPARATION FOR MOVEMENT P ro d , co m p a n y F ilm A u stralia P ty L td

F ilm A u stralia P ty L td S o n ia H u m p h rey

D is t. co m p a n yP ro d u ce rD ire c to rScrip tw riterP h o to g ra p h yS o u n d re co rd is tE d ito rE x e c , p ro d u cer P ro d , m an ag er P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t P ro d , assistant M a rk etin g L e n g th G a u g eS h o o t in g s to ck

G e o f f B arn es G e o f f B arn es K erry B ro w n

L e o Sullivan S u e H o rsley

Paul H u m fress R o n H a n n a m

E liz a b e th C lark e E m m a G o rd o n Jo h n Sw indells 1 x 2 0 m in u tes

1 " v ideo B e ta ca m

NEW SOUTH WALES FILM AND TELEVISION OFFICE

INVESTING IN PEOPLE P ro d u ctio n c o . W o o llo o m o o lo o

P ro d u cers

D ire c to r Scrip tw riter P ro d , m an ag er E d ito rs

S y n o p s is :T o ed u cate th o se w ith th e re ­sp on sib ility o f th e p ro ced u re n ecessary fo r en su rin g th e successfu l m o v e m en t o f A rm y U n its fro m p o in t A to p o in t B , in g o o d o rd e r w ith all e q u ip m e n t in o n e p iece.

P ro d u ctio n s P e te r C o x

C o rrie S o e te rb o e k P e te r C o x

H a ro ld L an d er M a ry -Jo y L u

R o b e r t G ib so n S te p h en D u n n

L ig h tin g G ra n t W atso n

R o b e r t L ish R u th B raceg ird le

F ra m e S e t & M a tch 1 9 m in u tes

B e ta ca m to 1 "

D ist. co m p an y P ro d u ce r Scrip tw riter M a rk etin g

THE WITNESS P ro d , co m p a n y F ilm A u stralia P ty L td

F ilm A ustralia P ty L td S o n ia H u m p h rey

R ich a rd R yan Jo h n Sw indells

S y n o p s is : A 2 0 m in u te film co m m issio n ed by th e M ilitary P o lice assign ed to th e U n it in in te rro g a tio n te ch n iq u e s ap p rop riate to tiie m ilitary c ircu m sta n ces in w h ich th ey w ill b e applied .

CHILD PROTECTION FILM

C am erap erson S o u n d A rt d irectio n P o s t p ro d u ctio n L e n g th G au g eS y n o p s is : T h e M a ritim e Services B o a rd o f N S W , w o rk in g clo sely w ith th e L a b o r C o u n cil o f N S W and various u n io n s , has estab lish ed an in jury p rev en tio n and re h a ­b ilita tio n p ro g ram to h elp in ju red s ta ff re tu rn to n o rm al w o rk as so o n as p ossib le. T h is v id eo o u tlin es th e reh a b ilita tio n p ro ­gram and show s it in a ctio n th ro u g h e x ­am p les o fin ju r ie s w h ich m ig h t o ccu r in th e w orkp lace.

NATURE’S SENTINELS P ro d u ctio n co m p an y A ccolad e

C o m m u n ica tio n sP ro d u ce rD ire c to rScrip tw riter

Sandra A lexan der P e te r Sm ith P e te r Sm ith

K ey grip S tew a rt G reenA rt d irecto r T rish R yanC o stu m e d esig n er T rish R yanM ak e-u p R a ch e l P ilch erP u b licity Sara H o u re z

L o u ise W illisC astin g Sh au n a W o lfso n

S tu d io A F T R SM ix ed a t A F T R SL e n g th 1 h o u rG au g e B eta ca mS y n o p s is : Action Replay is a co n tin u in g p layback o f a co m ed y o f dram as in volv in g sexual in co m p a tib ilities and w arfare in p e r­sonal re lation sh ip s. T h e actio n co n stan tly retu rn s o n its e lf an d leads th e six ch aracters d o w n d ifferen t roads (o v er tw enty-five y ears), o f th e ir ow n c h o o s in g , to o th e r p ossib ilities.

DOT AND THE KANGAROO TV SHOW P ro d , co m p an y Y o ram G ross F ilm

S tu d io P ty L td / B ey o n d In te rn a tio n a l G rou p

P ro d u ce r Y o ram G rossD ire c to r Y o ram G rossA sso c, p ro d u cer Phil G erlachS y n o p s is : D o t and th e K a n g a ro o , tw o lov eable stars fro m th e fam ou s Dot and the Kangaroo featu re film s, rom p th ro u g h th e w orld and re p o rt a b o u t th e p lan et w e live in . F ifty -tw o p rog ram s o f in fo rm a tio n , e n te rta in m e n t, live a ctio n and fun fo r kids and adults alike.

JACKAROOP ro d u ctio n co . C raw ford P ro d u ctio n s

B e s t boys

S o u n d reco rd ist B o o m o p era to r P ro d , d esign er A rt d irecto r A sst, art d irecto r Prop s buyers

Stan d b y props A rt d ep t, assistant C o n stru c tio n m an ag er C arp en ters

S e t p ain ter C o stu m e supervisor S tan d b y w ard robe M ak eu p / h air super M a k eu p / h a ir artist Sp ecial effects

A rm o u rer S tu n t c o -o rd in a to r Safety rep o rt

S teve C a rter Jo h n B ry d en -B ro w n

T im L lo yd M ark V a n K o o l

Q u e n tin H o le T o n y R aes

M ich e lle M cG a h ey Ian A llen

B ill B o o th Ja m es C o x

D avid Jo y ce Lau rie D o rn M ik e C arroll

S tev e B la tch fo rd P eter C ollias

L o u ise W akefield C aro lin e Suffield

Lesley R ouvray D e b b ie Lan ser

C h ris M u rray Steve C o u rtley

Brian B u m s G len Bosw ell

G eo rg e M an n ix

E x e c , p ro d u cer Ian Brad ley

C a s t : L in d a C ro p p er (L u c in d a ), B u rt C o o ­per ( G ustav ), A ndrew C larke ( L t. A ndrew s), P e te r B aaske (C o m m a n d e rS p ie r ) , B ill K err (S co tty Q u in n ), Jo n a th a n B ig g in s (Private M u rra y ), R o b B a x te r (S g t . B a rry ), V in c en t Ball (C o l. F o s te r ) , A lfred Be ll (M in is te r) , Paul S m ith (Priv ate R e ed ).S y n o p s is : T h e rivalry betw een tw o friends over L u cin d a is fu rth er co m p lica ted w hen th ey find th em selves o n d ifferen t sides du rin g W o rld W ar I.

TELEVISIONPRODUCTION

E x e c , p ro d u cer R a ch e l D ix o n P rod , assistant M ark L o g a n P ro d u cer B ill H u g h esScrip tw riter G ail Sullivan E d itors D e b o ra h R eid D ire c to r M ich ael C arson AUSTRALIA’S MOST WANTEDL e n g th 3 0 m in u tes S tu a rt A rm stro n g A sso c, p ro d u cer/ P ro d , co m p an y G run dy T elev isio n

G au g e V id e o L ig h tin g C am era M a rtin M c G ra th P ro d , supervisor V in ce Sm its P ro d u cer M a rg a re t Slarke

S y n o p s is : T o p ro m o te a resp o n sib le and 1G raphics F ran ces Sm ith C astin g Jan P o n tifex D ire cto rs A n drew F riedm an

in fo rm ed resp on se to ch ild m a ltre a tm en t N arrator A rth u r D ig n am P u blicity Susan E liz a b eth W o o d D avid M o rg a n

a m o n g p rofessio nals w h o w o rk w ith ch il- L en g th 2 2 m in u tes S y n o p s is : A fo u r-h o u r m in i-series, Jacka- Erik S teen

dren . G aug e 1 6 m m roo is th e story o f a w ild A ustralian sto ck - Ig o r A uzinsS y n o p s is : T h e L o rd H o w e Islan d re g io n is m an, a part-A boriginal jack aro o w hose b itter M a lco lm T e n n e n t

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE LAW a W o rld H er ita g e area, adm in istered by th e fam ily stru g gle fo r po w er and land erupts in P eter B ern ard os

E x e c , p ro d u cer A n n D a rro u z e t L o rd H o w e Islan d B o a rd . T h e island is o f th e b listerin g h ea t o f th e W est Australian Ju lie M o n ey

Scrip tw riter T o n y W rig h t great value fo r n atu re co n serv a tio n , ed uca- o u tb a ck . R ussell W eb b

F ritz H a m m ersley tio n , research and passive recrea tio n . T h is S crip t ed itors G in n y Lo w n des

S u e M c C a u le y video show s th e special n ature o f th e island KATIE'S RAINBOW Jo h n C o u lte r

L e n g th 1 8 m in u tes as w ell as its g e o lo g y and its h istory. P ro d . co . S o u th A ustralian F ilm C o rp . Jo h n H u g g in so n

G au g e B V U E x e c , p rod u cer Jo c k B lair E x e c , p rodu cers Philip East

S y n o p s is : T h is v id eo is co n ce rn e d w ith WILDLIFE - CORPORATE STRATEGY P ro d u cer Jan M arn ell P e te r P in n e

d o m estic v io le n ce , fo cu sin g o n th e legal P ro d , co m p an y T a n d e m P ro d u ctio n s Supervising p rod u cer G us H ow ard P ro d , supervisor S te p h en Jo n e s

o p tio n s available to v ictim s. P ro d u cer M a rta Sen g ers Scrip tw riter D eb o ra h C o x P ro d , co o rd in ato rs B arbara R in g

D ire c to r M ich a el Ew ers S to ry ed ito r P e te r G aw ler Lisa H arrison

ELDERLY CITIZENS SAFETY Scrip tw riters Ia n C h arles L e n g th 2 x 2 hou rs Prod , m an ag er V icki Popplew ell

E x e c , p ro d u cer R a ch e l D ix o n G avin G aten by G au g e 16 m m U n it m anagers R o b S h o rt

S crip tw riter A n am aria B e lig an N arrato r Jo h n D en g a te S y n o p s is : O n a r e m o te so u th ern island th e Sean C lay ton

P ro d u ctio n C o . E n tre g P ty . L td . L e n g th 1 7 m in u tes w orld has fo rg o tte n K atie loo k s o nly fo r P ro d , secretary T o n y Forsyth

D ire c to r C o lin Skyba G au g e B e ta ca m to 1 " a ccep tan ce and fu lfilm en t as a d o c to r and a P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t S c o tt H ib b e rt

E d ito r M ich a e l V an n S y n o p s is : P ro d u ced fo r th e N atio n al Parks w o m an . In stead she finds an im p ossib le P ro d , assistants Lau ra H ayes

P h o to g ra p h y C h ris R e ed and W ild life Serv ice o f N ew S o u th W ales to love. A drian Pickersgill

S o u n d R e co rd is t Pau l H ellard in fo rm s ta ff o f th e aim s and o b jec tiv es o f P e te r C o n ro y

L e n g th 1 2 m in u tes th e Serv ice in th e years 1 9 8 9 to 1 9 9 1 and THE PRIVATE WAR OF LUCINDA SMITH P e te r F itzg era ld

G au g e B e ta ca m provide a h isto ry o f th e service w h ich places P ro d . co . R e so lu tio n F ilm s P ty L im ited 1st asst d irecto r S tew art W rig h t

S y n o p s is : T o assist sen io r citiz en s to co p e it in a w ider social c o n te x t. D ist. com p an y R e v co m L im ited 2 n d asst d irecto r A dam S p en ce

w ith tra ffic as p ed estrian s, drivers and users , , Prod u cers G eo ffrey D an iels C o n tin u ity Kay H en n essy

o f p u b lic tra n sp o rt TELEVISION R ay A lehin Lin da Ray

PRE-PRODUCTION D ire c to r Ray A lehin Shirley Ballard

RIVER MANAGEMENT Scrip tw riter P eter Y eldham Sian F atou ras

E x e c , p ro d u cer R a ch e l D ix o n ACTION REPLAY P ro d , m an ag er D en n is Kiely C astin g Su e M an g er

S crip tw riter B r id g e t G o o d w in P ro d u ctio n co m p an y A F T R S P ro d , co -o rd in a to r C aro lin e B o n h a m R esearchers B en C h esh ire

L e n g th 2 0 - 2 5 m in u tes E x e c , p ro d u cer W illiam F itzw ater P ro d , secretary M o n ica Sim s A llen M a th e so n

G au g e 1 6 m m / 1 " v ideo P ro d u ce r Sara H o u rez P ro d , a cco u n ta n t C y n th ia Kelly K aren Ja rre tt

S y n o p s is : T o raise th e aw areness o f V ic to - D ire c to r Sara H o u rez A sst, a cc o u n ta n t C aitlyn Steven s Kay B en d le

rians to th e uses o f o u r rivers an d th e S crip tw riter Fay W eld on B u s. Affairs D an ielle T a e g e r R esearch assistant A lexandra K eller

b en efits o b ta in e d fro m th e m . A lso sh ow in g B ased o n th e play by Fay W eld on L o ca tio n m an ag er V al W in d o n M u sic ed ito r G ary H ard m an

w h at a ctio n can b e tak en to h a lt d egrada- P ro d , design er T rish Ryan 1st asst, d irecto r Phil R ich G affers G rah am M u ld er

tio n o f o u r rivers. P ro d , supervisor K eiran U sh er 2 n d asst, d irecto r Jo h n M ered ith Jo h n E n g lerP ro d , co o rd in a to r A n g ela M elo n i 3 rd asst, d irecto r Jen n ifer C o u sto n D ire c to r ’s assistant K ristin V ou m ard

VEHICLE OCCUPANT SAFETY P ro d , m an ag er L o u ise W illis; C o n tin u ity L arrain e Q u in n ell A rt d irecto rs T o n y Rayes

E x e c , p ro d u cer R a ch e l D ix o n 1 st asst d irecto r D en ise In g h am D O P P eter H en d ry V ivian W ilson

S crip tw riter D av id T a ft C o n tin u ity K e n M cSw aini C am era o p erato r R o g e r Lan ser A sst art d irecto r Brian W . A lexan der

L e n g th 1 0 - 1 2 m in u tes S crip t assistant K en M cSw aini F o c u s puller R o b e rt F o ste r A rt d ep t co o rd . L e e Jo h n B u lgin

G au g e B V U L ig h tin g C lap p er load er Phillip M u rp hy M ak e-u p V iv M ep h am

S y n o p s is : T o illu stra te th e ways in w h ich cam erap erson Jo n a th o n O gilvie 2 n d cam era o p . D an n y R u h lm an n B elin d a B u rk e

v eh icle o ccu p a n ts are a t risk , w h ilst d e m o n ­ C a m era o p erators Paul K olsky K ey grip B re tt M cD o w e ll R o ch e lle F ord

stra tin g th e m ean s to in crease v eh icle o c c u ­ D a n a Rayson A sst, grip Jo h n T a te H airdressers H ea th e r M c L a re n

p a n t safety w ith em p hasis o n restra in t use. F ran k V id in ha G affer P e te r O ’B rien V icto ria T h o m p so n

N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 75

G ail M ayes E d ito rs H arley O liver S o u n d G ary S ch u ltz A sst m ixer Ia n N eilso nW ard ro b e Ju lie B a rto n R o b e r t D av id son P e te r Brad ley S tu n ts co o rd in a to r C h ris A n d erso n

Phillipa H ain M a rk V erk erk E rn ie E v eritt Still p h o to g ra p h y V irg in ia Sp eersW a rd ro b e asst K ate B o a lch C o m p o se r T w ilig h t P ro d u ctio n s N eville K elly A m en ities G e o f f M c D o n e llProp s bu yer Jo h n C arroll E x e c , p ro d u cer P e te r A b b o tt S tag in g G o rd o n D u n n R u n n e r W arren P arso n so nS tan d b y props Jo h a n n a B ia n co P ro d , secretary T h e re se H ag erty A n d rew M itch e ll P u blicity V irg in ia S a rg e n t

Stev e H a ig P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t A ra Sahargian M ak e-u p T h e lm a H e n so n U n it p u b licist D i W h iteC a s t : B ryan M arshall (H o s t) C am era o p era to r various W ard ro b e C o n c e tta Raffa C a te rin g A & B C a te rin gS y n o p s is : P rog ram seek in g p u b lic help to B o o m o p erato r various Jo y ce Im lach S tu d ios A B C F re n ch s F o re s tassist th e p o lice in solv ing cu rren t crim es. M ak e-u p various S e t dresser M a rk R eyn o ld s M ix ed at A B C G o re H ill

H airdresser W arren H an rah an Props A lf C am illeri L a b o ra to ry A tlabBEYOND TOMORROW Props D avid K in g S p ecial effects R o d C lack L e n g th 4 x 5 0 m ins

P ro d . co . B ey o n d P ro d u ctio n s P ty L td Prop s buyer D avid K in g P u blicity M a rio n Page G aug e 1 6 m mD ist co m p an y B e y o n d In tern a tio n a l Sp ecial effects C u sto m V id eo M u sic associate G o rd o n G rib b in C a s t : C a ro lin e G o o d a ll, B ill H u n te r , P hilip

G rou p In c . S e t design er F red d ie L aw ren ce “B ig G ig ” T h e m e Sw in g in g Sidew alks Q u ast, M a rtin Sh aw , P au lin e C h a n , P e te rP ro d u cer Ia n C ross S e t co n stru c tio n U p -S e t P ty L td S e t co n stru c tio n A B C W o rk sh o p C arro ll, T ra cy M a n n , P a t B ish o p , S te p h enD ire c to r G e o ff T a n n e r M u sical d irectors M u rray B u rn s H ig h e tt Payne.E x e c , p rod u cer P e te r A b b o tt C o lin Bayley L e n g th O n e H o u r S y n o p s is : C assidy is th e P rem ier o f N ewA sso c, p rodu cers Sh ay ne C o llie r M u sic p erform ed by T w ilig h t C a s t : W en d y H a rm er (C o -h o s t) , G lyn n S o u th W ales w h o , o n his d e a th b e d , n o m i­

P eta N ew b o ld P ro d u ctio n s N ich o las (C o -h o s t) , Jea n K ittso n , D o u g n ates his estran g ed d a u g h te r as ex e cu to r o fE ileen T u o h y S o u n d ed ito r Ju lian E llin g w orth A n th o n y A llstars, E m p ty P o ck ets (M a t­ his esta te . A sto ry o f co rru p tio n , m u rd er

G e o ff F itzp atrick M ix er Ju lian E llin g w orth th ew P ark in so n , M a tth ew Q u arterm ain e) an d p o litica l in trig u e ag ain st a b ack g ro u n dB rig itte Z in sin g er Still p h otog rap h y various S y n o p s is : As th e tid e su g g ests, i t is o n e o f Sy dn ey , H o n g K o n g and L o n d o n .

T im W arn er T e c h adviser C h arlie Bu sby h o u r o f live e n te rta in m e n t, a m ixtu re o fIa n B rem n er P u blicity M ich ael Sh ep h ard stand-up com edy, sketch com edy and m usic, COME IN SPINNER

C o rresp o n d en ts G ary C u b b erley G eo rg in a H arrop w ith a special g u est and a d ifferen t ban d P ro d . c o . A u stralian B ro a d ca stin g C o rp .Je a n H ill Stud ios A T N 7 each w eek. A show case fo r up and co m in g D ist. co . A ustralian B ro a d ca stin g C o rp .

Susan H u n t M ix ed a t B e y o n d Facilities y o u n g co m ics w h o have ex p erien ced very P ro d u cer Ja n C h ap m anR an d y M e ier L e n g th 1 h o u r lim ited television exp osure. D ire c to r R o b e r t M arch an d

R ich ard W iese G aug e 1 " v ideo Scrip tw riters N ick E n r ig h tProd , m an ag er Livia H an ich C a s t : Ian F in lay , Je ffW a tso n , C h ris A rdill- CASSIDY Lissa B e n y o nP ro d , co o rd in a to r V ick i A g g G uin n ess, S im o n N ash t, A m an da K eller, P ro d . co . A rchive F ilm s P ty L td / A B C P ro d , design er Ja n e t P atterso nP ro d , secretary C lem e n tin e G riffin S im o n R eev e, M axin e G rey , Bryan Sm ith P ro d u cer B o b W eis E x e c , p ro d u cer San d ra LevyP ro d , a cco u n ta n t B arbara B row n (p resen ters) L in e p ro d u cer T o n y W in ley Prod , co n su ltan t S tev e K n ap m anP o st-p ro d , co o rd . A m anda H ick ey S y n o p s is : Beyond2000is a o n e -h o u r w eekly D ire c to r C arl S ch u ltz P ro d , co o rd in a to r R o b e rta O ’L earyP o st-p ro d , assistant M artin television p ro g ram , exp lo rin g th e progress Scrip tw riter Jo a n n a M u rray-Sm ith P ro d , m an ag er Jo h n W in ter

W illiam s o f scien ce and te ch n o lo g y . I t features th e L in e d irecto r T o n y W in ley U n it m an ag er Jo h n D o w n ieR esearch co o rd in a to r R u th Parnell latest scientific b reak th ro u g h s and in g e n ­ Based o n th e n ovel by M o rris W est L o ca tio n m an ag er Paul V in e yR esearchers A n n a C ater ious tech n ica l in n ov ation s w hich are shap- P h o to g rap h y E llery R yan L o ca tio n fin der P e te r Law less

V ic to r M arsh in g th e w orld and p rep aring us fo r life S o u n d reco rd ist N ick W o o d P ro d , secretary Lisa H aw kesF ran ces T h o m p so n bey on d th e year 2 0 0 0 . E d ito rs T o n y Kavanagh P ro d , a cco u n ta n t W ay n e H en ry

M arsh a B e n n e tt Lyn Solly 1st asst d irecto r R ussell W h iteo a kS tu d io p rod u cer C h ris H aw kshaw THE BIG GIG P ro d , design er M u rray P ick n e tt 2 n d asst d irecto r C lin t W h iteS tu d io flo o r m an ager Ia n W h ite Prod . co . A B C T V E n te rta in m en t C o m p o ser Paul G rabow sky 2 n d u n it asst dir. S tev en Stan n ardC o m p o se r T w ilig h t P ro d u ctio n s P ro d u cer T e d R o b in so n E x e c , p rod u cer Sandra Levy C o n tin u ity S u z a n n e B ro w n

M u rray B u rn s D ire c to r T e d R o b in so n A ssoc, p rod u cer W ayne Barry E xtras castin g Ire n e G askellC o lin Bayley S crip t W riters Patrick C o o k P ro d , m an ag er C aro l C h irlian C astin g co n su ltan ts L iz M u llin ar

C o m p u te r g rap h icsM atth ew U rm en y h azi W en d y H a rm er P ro d , co -o rd in a to r Sh u n a B u rd e tt C astin g C o n su lta n ts P ty L tdL ig h tin g cam era H an s H eid rich M a tth ew Q u arterm ain e U n it m an ag er Jo h n D o w n ie C am era o p era to r Paul C o ste llo

M ich ael O ates M a tth ew Parkinson L o ca tio n m an ag er M au d e H ea th F o cu s p uller A n d rew M c C ly m o n tM ich ael Ew ers Jea n K ittso n P ro d , secretary K errie M ain w arin g C lap p er/ load er M a tth ew T e m p le

D avid C ollin s G lyn n N ich olas 1st asst d irecto r S c o tt H artfo rd -D av ies K ey grip G ary B u rd e ttB arry W est D o u g A n th o n y A llstars 2 n d asst d irecto r T o n y T ilse A sst grip B e n H y de

M ixers M ark T a n n e r Prod , d esigner D es W h ite 3rd asst d irecto r R ussell B u rto n 2 n d u n it p h o to g . Pau l P an d ou lisJu lian E llin g w orth T ech n ica l p rod u cer R ick H u n te r C o n tin u ity R h o n d a M cA v oy G affer T im Jo n e s

O fflin e ed itors R ay N eale L ig h tin g d irecto r P e te r S im o n d so n P ro d u ce r’s asst. A n n e -M a rie G askin Electric ian s P ierre D rio nN ick G lover G rap h ic d esigner Pam A b bey C astin g L iz M u llin ar T im H arris

A n drew Barnes A sst, d esigner N ick H illigo ss E xtras castin g Su e W alsh B o o m o p erato r D av e P earso nP e te r B rich ta A d ju tan t Patrick C o o k C astin g co n su lta n t L iz M u llin ar D esig n er C a th e rin e S ilmC alli C eram i E x e c , p rod u cer F ran k W ard C am era o p era to r Paul C o ste llo A sst designers K aren L an d

M u sic p erfo rm ed by T w ilig h t P ro d ’ns A ssoc, p rod u cer N eil W ilson F o cu s p uller A ndrew M c C ly m o n t H e le n B au m an nM u rray B u rn s P ro d , m an ag er H ele n W ilham s C lap p er load er G reg H eap D esig n ers asst C h a rlo tte W a tts

C o lin Bayley P ro d , secretary F ran ces F itzg era ld K ey grip Jo h n H u n tin g fo rd C o stu m e design er Jim M u rrayKevin Bayley P ro d u ce r’s assts R o sa lin d D o h e n y A sst grip G ary B u rd e tt M ak e-u p & H a ir C h ristin e E h le r t

S o u n d ed ito r C ate C ahill D an n i S to u t 2 n d u n it p h o to g . G e o ff M an n is C h ristin e B e lfo u rS o u n d reco rd ists R ow lan d M cM an is 1st asst d irecto r M ark G ib so n G affer T im Jo n e s D av id Jen n in g s

Bira C astro 2 n d asst d irectors D o n Ryan E lectric ian K en P ettig rew W ard ro b e co o rd . M iran d a B ro c kG raham W yse H u g h Jo h n so n B o o m o p era to r C h ris N ilsen M ic h e lle L e tte r

M a rtin H a rrin g to n M u sic p rod u cer Ia n B attersb y A rt d irecto r G rah am Jo h n so n W a rd ro b e assts L o rra in e V erh ey enR o b e rt H arle Stu d io cam eras R o g e r M cA lp in e C o stu m e design er Jo la n ta N ejm a n N in a Parson s

C M X ed ito r B ru ce H a n co c k S o n e r T u n cay M ak e-u p S u zie C lem o Prop s C h ris R y m anS tu d io lig h tin g d irecto r R ich ard C urtis G reg W ilden Jo a n P e tch A n to n C a n n o nS tu d io m ake-up M a d o n n a M elro se D arrell M a rtin W ard ro b e co o rd . C o lle en W o u lfe S tev e P e m b ro k ePu blicity C heryl C onw ay A ndrew S ch m id t W a rd ro b e assts Phillipa W o o tte n Prop s buyers C o h n B ailey

S c o tt Pen za K aren Jo h n so n L o rra in e V erhay en Ia n A n d rew arth aStu d io P ro -im ag e Ian M arg ocsy Prop s P e te r F itzg era ld S tan d b y props C h ris R y m anP o st-p ro d , video V id eo lab S im o n Evans B e n n H y de A n to n C a n n o nStandards co n versio n V T C L o s C am era assistants C h ris N u n d A n to n C a n n o n S te v e P e m b ro k e

A ngeles Jo sh u a Franks Prop s buyers Paddy M c D o n a ld Sp ecial effects Jo h n N ealL e n g th 2 2 x 1 h ou r M o n ica K apeen Susan G lavich S e t d e co ra to r San d ra C a rr in g to nG aug e 1 " D o lb y A video G ran t A ustin Sp ecial effects P e te r L e g g e tt K im O sw inS y n o p s is : Five A m erican rep o rters travel Jo h n Bow stead S e t dressers R o b e rt H u tch in so n R o b e r t J . S im o nth e w orld to m o n ito r th e la test d ev elop ­ F ran k P etro w itz T im T u lk Ja so n H o lm a nm en ts in scien ce and tech n o lo g y . C h ris L oveday S ce n ic artist Paul B ro ck e b a n k S ce n ic artist Pau l B ro ck le b a n k

C ran e crew N elso n H ey w o od Stan d b y carp en ter Ia n R h o d es N e g m a tch in g P am T o o s eBEYOND 2000 L an a K earney S e t co n stru c tio n L au rie D o rn M u sical d irecto r M a rtin A rm ig er

Prod . co . B ey o n d P ro d u ctio n s P ty L td V id eo tap e D en n y P o tte r N e g m atch in g Pam ela T o o s e S o u n d ed ito rs P h ilip p a By ersD ist. co . B ey o n d In te rn a tio n a l G rou p L ig h tin g co n so le Jo h n Sm ith S tan d b y se t fin isher B ill K enn ed y L io n e l B u shP ro d u cer T im C lucas V isio n co n tro l A n drew T o p p S o u n d ed ito r L io n e l B u sh F a b ia n S a n ju roD ire c to r Ju d ith ’ Jo h n -S to ry N ick G reg o ric E d itin g assistants N ico le L a M acch ia E d itin g assistants M a rtin C o n n o rP h o to g rap h y various V isio n M ixers Jo e M u rray F a b ia n S n ju ro Jo h n C h am pS o u n d reco rd ists various G o ra n N ilsso n M ix e r M ark W alk er S tu n ts c o o rd in a to r G u y N o rris

76 C 1 N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

S till p h o to g ra p h y M a rtin W eb b y S y n o p s is : S e t in th e sm all rural co m m u n ity Pau l M o lo n e y S h o o tin g s to ck K o d ak 7 2 9 1 , 7 2 9 2R u n n e r M elissa W o o d h a m s o f “W an d in V alley ” , th e series deals w ith A rch N ich o lso n C a s t : A n d rew M cF a r la n e (D r . T o m C a l­C a te rin g S tu d io and lo c a tio n ca terers m ed ical an d social issues, th ro u g h th e m a jo r Scrip tw riters L u is Bay o nas la g h a n ), R o b e r t G ru b b (D r . G e o f f S ta n -L a b o ra to ry A tla b ch aracters an d th e loca l B u sh N u rsin g P e te r K in lo ch d ish ), L iz B u rch (D r . C h ris R a n d a ll) , L e -L a b . lia ison Ia n R ussell H o sp ita l. I t a lso d ram atizes th e lives o f th e Ja n 'S a rd i n o re S m ith (S is ter K ate W ellin g s), P e te rL e n g th 4 X 5 0 m in u tes loca l v et and P ark R a n g er. T e rry S ta p le to n O ’B rien (S a m P a tte rso n ), R e b e cca G ib n eyG au g e 1 6 m m P e te r A llen (E m m a P a tte rso n ), B r e tt C lim o (D r . D avidS h o o tin g s to ck K o d ak E STREET P h o to g ra p h y R o n H a g en R a tc liffe ) , A lex Papps (N ick C ard ali),C a s t : L isa H a rro w (C la ire Je ffr ie s ) , K erry P ro d . c o . W estsid e T e lev is io n P rod n s “ B u tc h ” San k o M au rie F ield s (V ic B u ck ley ), V al JellayA rm stro n g (D e b F o r e s t) , R e b e c c a G ib n ey D is t. c o . W estsid e T e lev is io n P rod n s S o u n d reco rd ists Ph ilip p e D ecra u sa z (N a n cy B u ck le y ), G eo rg e Kapiniaris ( D . J . ).(G u in e a M a lo n e ) , G ary S w e et ( Ja c k F o r ­ P ro d u ce r D en is P h elan Jo h n M c K erro w S y n o p s is : A R o yal F ly in g D o c to r Serv ice ise s t) , G ary D a y (N ig e l C arsta irs), Rhys D ire c to rs Ju lia n P rin g le E d ito rs B ill M u rp h y lo ca ted in th e o u tb a c k to w n o f C o o p e rsM c C o n n o c h ie (A n g u s M c F a r la n e ) , Jay P e te r A ndrik ides S c o tt M c L e n n a n C ro ssin g . T h e fo u r d o cto rs , G e o ff S ta n -H a c k e tt (K im S c o tt ) . G rah am R o u se D e e L ie b e n b e rg dish , C h ris R an d all, D avid R atc liffe andS y n o p s is : Sy dn ey 1 9 4 4 : a g arriso n to w n in V ik to rs R ite lis D ire c to r o f p ro d u ctio n V in c e S m its T o m C allag h an co n ten d n o t o nly w ithflu x te sted by th e socia l upheavals o f w ar Jo h n Ban n as P ro d , co n tro l J e f f S h en k er m ed ical ch a llen g es b u t also w ith th e harshan d th e c o n v e rg e n ce o f A m erican fo rce s. In Scrip tw riters D av id Phillips E x e c , p ro d u cer Ia n Brad ley physical en v iro n m en t.th is w o rld o f ch a n ce th re e rem ark able G raem e K o etsv eld A sso c, p ro d u cer R ay H en n essyw o m e n , C la ire , D e b an d G u in ea are p lying Sally W e b b P o st-p ro d , supervisor Su e W a sh in g to n G.P.fo r th e h ig h e s t stakes: survival, secu rity and T o m H eg arty P ro d , c o -o rd in a to r G in a B la ck P ro d . co m p . R o ad sh o w C o o te &love. C aro l W illiam s U n it m anagers F ran L u g t C a rro ll/ A B C

D avid A llen Jo h n G reen e E x e c , p rodu cers M a tt C arro llA COUNTRY PRACTICE M ary D a g m a r D avies L o ca tio n m an ag er G reg Ellis Sandra Levy

P ro d , co m p an y JN P F ilm s Pty. L td . N ich o la s L a n g to n P ro d , secretary W en d y W alk er Sup ervising p ro d u cer S u e M astersD is t. co m p an y A T N 7 Jo h n U p to n P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t K evin P lu m m er D ire cto rs V ariou sP ro d u cers D en n y L aw ren ce L in d e n W ilk in so n 1st asst d irectors C h ris Pag e Scrip tw riters V ariou s

B ill Searle S e n io r scrip t ed ito r T im Pye K ath H ay den S to ry ed ito r G reg M illinD ire c to rs R o b e r t M e illo n S cr ip t ed itors C a ro lin e S ta n to n R o b K ew ley S crip t c o -o rd in a to r K ris W yld

L e ig h S p e n ce H u g h S tu ckey 2 n d asst d irecto rs . A rn ie C u sto S crip t ed ito r T im PyeP e te r M axw ell L o u ise C ran e C h ristian R o b in so n S to ry d ep artm en t M a tt F o rd

C h ris M a r tin -Jo n e s R esearch er C a ro l L o n g C o n tin u ity C arm el T o rc a s io K risten D u n p h yS crip tw riters D av id B o u tla n d R e se a rch e r’s asst V al G rah am A n n e W e n t M ed ica l co n su ltan ts D r S te p h en F aux

Ju d ith C o lq u h o u n B ased o n idea by F o rre st R ed lich S to ry ed ito r A n drew K enn ed y D r D avid W h itte nStev e Spears A u dio d irecto rs G raem H ick s S cr ip t ed itors P e te r H ep w o rth Sn r p rod , d esign er M arcu s N o rth

B a sed o n idea by Ja m es D av ern D o m in ic B rin e M a tth ew L o v erin g D esig n ers L e ig h T ie rn e yP h o to g ra p h y S tev e B ra ck E d ito r M ich ael H ag an C astin g Ja n P o n tifex C o lin R u d d erA u d io d irecto rs H o w a rd F lick e r P ro d , d esign er M a rtin M cA d o o C astin g assistants L o u ise M itch e ll F reya H adley

R u ssel T h o m p so n C o m p o se r A shley Irw in F o c u s pullers C ra ig B ard en A ssoc, p rod u cers K im V eceraE d ito r G ra em e A ndrew s E x e c , p ro d u cer F o rre st R ed lich G ary B o tto m le y Ju d y M u rp h yP ro d , d esig n er S teve M u ir A sso c, p ro d u cer B ren d a n M o o n e y C lap p er/ load ers Ian Phillips C o stu m e design er M ic h e lle M ilg a teC o m p o se r M ik e P erjan ik P ro d , m an ag er D ale A rch er B re tt M atth ew s C o m p o ser S im o n W alk erE x e c , p ro d u cer Ja m es D av ern P ro d , co o rd in a to r R ach e l Q u irk K ey grips C ra ig D u stin g A sst p rod , m g r F ran ço ise F o m b erta u xP ro d , supervisor D av id W a tts P ro d , secretary D e b b ie Jo h n so n Jo h n C u m m in g s L o ca tio n m an ag er K ate In g h a mP ro d , co o rd in a to r . B a rb a ra L u cas P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t B jo rn M ag u s A sst grips C o lin M c L e a n Prod , m an ag er A n n e tte G ov erP ro d , m an ag er D av id W a tts P ro d , assistant V ikki K n o tt W ayne M itch e ll Prod , secretary Susan M an sfie ldU n it m an ag er M a rg i C rem in 1 st ass flo o r m grs A n d rew M errifield G affers B ill Jo n e s 1st asst d irectors G ary S tep h en sL o c a tio n m an ag er P e te r W arm an S te p h en H en ley G ary P lu n k e tt D avid Y o u n gP ro d , secretary T o n i H ig g in b o th a m D o ria n N ew stead B o o m o p erators C ra ig W alm sley A lan Parson sP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t. L u cy V o rst 2 n d ass flo o r m grs M ik e F erg u so n C raig B eg g s M ark S ta n fo rth1 st asst d irecto rs Ia n S im m o n s A ld o K in g A rt d irecto r A n d rew R eese S crip t assistant M ich ael M ille r

R ich a rd M c G ra th 3rd d irecto rs assts T ra ce y Jo n e s A sst art d irecto r L e ig h E ich ler C astin g co n su ltan ts M au ra FayM ark M o ro n e y L y n n D an zey C o stu m e design er C lare G riffin & A sso ciates

2 n d asst d irecto rs A n d rew T u rn e r G illian Styne M ak e-u p B rad S m ith E xtras castin g Iren e G askellP e te r D u d k in P ro d u ce r’s asst G re tch en C o o k F io n a R e e s -Jo n e s C astin g co o rd in a to r H a tice Kanli

D ire c to rs ’ assts K aren W illin g C astin g A u din e L e ith H airdressers Lisa Jo n e s Prop s buyers R o ry C ro n inS tep h a n ie R ich ard s L ig h tin g d irectors T o m C arey C h ristin e M ille r Ia n A n drew arth a

K aren M an sfie ld B o b M ille r W ard ro b e supervisor K eely Ellis U n it p u b licist V irg in ia S a rg e n tS cr ip t assistant C h a rlo tte A lexan d er C am era o p era to r B arry A rm stro n g W ard ro b e standby S u e M iles Stu d ios A B CP ro d u ctio n assts Ju s tin e S la ter C am era assistant R o b K err D en ise B ra d d o n M ix ed a t A B C

Pip N ack ard A rt d ep t c o -o rd . E lle P e terso n Prop s buyer K eely Ellis L e n g th 1 h r w eeklyC a stin g S h au n a C ro w ley C o stu m e designers Ja n e Jo h n sto n A sst p rop s buyer F io n a O w en G aug e 1 " v ideoC a m era o p erato rs G len S te er W a rd ro b e co n su lta n t M iv B rew er Stan d b y props Paul Kiely C a s t : M ich a el C raig (W illia m ), Jo h nS tu d io assistants A n d rew S h o rt M ak e-u p / h a ir L iz H arp er R ich ard W illiam so n M c T e rn a n (R o b e r t ) , Sarah C h ad w ick

P e te r W estley S tan d b y w ard ro be A n n ie P e a cco k Sp ecial effects V isual E ffects (C a th y ), M ich a el O ’N eill (S te v e ), D en iseJo h n de R u vo L izz ie G ard in er S e t dressers B ra d K in g R o b e rts ( Ju lie ) , B rian R o o n e y (M ic h a e l) .

B o o m o p erators D av id M asala M ark R io rd an Sou li Livaditis S y n o p s is : D ram a series deta ilin g th e co rn -M a rk M itch e ll W a rd ro b e bu yer Ly n L o n d o n S c o tt A d co ck ings and g o in g s o f an in n er city m ed ical

M u rray H o g a n W ard ro b e M ich e le L eo n a rd S im o n P r ic e -M c C u tc h e o n p ractice .A rt d irec to r S teve M u ir S e t dressers Phillip M ille r R ich ie D eh n eM a k e -u p R ach ae l D a l S a n to R o b H o lla n d S e t co n stru c tio n G o rd o n W h ite HAYDAZE

K it M o o re Prop s Lisa A tk in son A sst ed ito r A n n e G arter P ro d , co m p an y B F P ro d u ctio n s L tdJo a n n e Steven s Bliss Sw ift M u sic ed ito r Jo h n C liffo rd -W h ite D ist. co m p an y B a rro n F ilm s L td

V ey atie H irs t S tev e M o ra n ( O B ) S o u n d ed itors C o lin Sw an Prod u cers Paul D . B a rro nW a rd ro b e T h e re se R en d le S tan d b y props M arcu s Erasm us M ich a el G arden R o z B erry sto n eW a rd ro b e assts A llan B u rn s Paul Jo n e s E d itin g assistants G eo rg e P arto n D ire cto rs D avid Rapsey

A m an da B lo o m fie ld M u sical d irecto r A shley Irw in Ju stin H u g h es Paul M o lo n e yM e g H u n t S o u n d ed ito r D eri H ad ler M ixers D avid H arriso n Scrip tw riters D avid Rapsey

P rop s b u yer Jo h n Pau l (L o n ) L u cin i R u n n e r A liso n Picku p A n d rew Jo b s o n Jo h n RapseyS ta n d b y props D irk V a n den D riesen A rt d e p t ru n n er A n d rew Playford S tu n ts co o rd in a to r C h ris A n d erso n G len d a H a m b ly

Ja n e Park er L e n g th 5 2 x 1 h o u r S tu n ts N ew G en era tio n S tu n ts B ased o n idea by D avid RapseyM a lc o lm G reg o ry C a s t : Pen n y C o o k , B ro o k e A n dersen , C ecily D rivers Paul R o g a n Jo h n Rapsey

P u b lic ity Ju lia W yszkow ski P o iso n , L es D a y m a n , K atrina Sed g w ick , Llew elyn H ig g in s P h o to g ra p h y Ia n P u gsleyU n it p u b lic ist M a rg ie C rem in V ic R o o n e y , T o n y M a rtin , W arren Jo n e s , B e s t boy Jim Perkin s S o u n d reco rd ist D avid G lasserC a te rin g T a ste B u d d ies Pau l K e lm an , A lu ssa-Jan e C o o k . B a ttista R em ati E d ito rs G e o f f H allS tu d io s A T N Sev en S tu d io “ B ” S y n o p s is : A dram a fo cu sin g o n an in n er R u n n e r T rav is W alker T a n T h ie n T h a iS h o o tin g sto ck 1 " v id eo city su b u rb an d its resid en ts . U n it p u b licist Susan E liz a b e th W o o d P ro d , c o o rd in a to r R o s S co ttsL e n g th 2 x 1 h o u r C a te rin g L o c a tio n O n e C aterin g P ro d , m an ag er D e b C o p lan dC a s t : L o rra e D e sm o n d , B rian W en z e l, Jo a n THE FLYING DOCTORS - SERIES V S tu d io s C raw ford P r o d u c tio n s / G T V 9 U n it m an ag er S im o n H aw k insSy d n ey , S h a n e P o rte o u s , Jo y c e Ja c o b s , Syd P ro d . c o . C raw fo rd P ro d u ctio n s P ty . L td . M ix e d at C raw ford P ro d u ctio n s L o ca tio n m an ag er L iz K irk h amH e y le n , G o rd o n P ip er, K a te R a iso n , P ro d u ce r Stan ley W alsh L a b o ra to ry C in ev ex P ro d , secretary Sh arryn S c o ttM ic h a e l M u n tz , G e ò rg ie P ark er, M a t t D ay , D ire c to rs C o lin B u d d s, L e n g th 2 6 x 4 7 m ins P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t A n n M c F a r la n eG e ò rg ie F ish er. G ary C onw ay G au g e 1 6 m m P ro d , assistant L y n R o b e rts o n

C 1 N E M A P A P E R S 7 5 7 7

1st asst d irecto rs G rah am M u rrayG illian H arris

2 n d asst d irecto r M ich ael M e rcu rioC o n tin u ity C h ris O ’C o n n e ll-B ry a n t

Ja n P ian to n iC a stin g Jo h n RapseyC am era o p era to r Ian PugsleyF o cu s puller M a rc E d g c o m b eC lap p er load er S tev e S c o ttKey grip Jo h n G old n eyA sst grip M ich ael V ivianG affer Phil G o lo m b ickB o o m o p era to r Jen n y S u tc liffeA rt d irecto r Su e V ivianA rt d ep artm en t asst A licia W alshC o stu m e d esign er N o el H ow ellM ak e-u p K aren Sim s

M arilyn Sm itsW ard ro b e standby D elia Sp icerProps bu yer L aw ren ce W ard m anStan d b y props P eter M o y esS e t d e co ra to r K im S ex to nC a rp en ter T o n y von D ruskaS e t co n stru c tio n P eter C arm a n / D a k o ta A sst ed itors Ju lie G ran t

C in dy C lark so n N eg . m atch in g W arw ick D risco llS o u n d ed ito r G len n M artinE d itin g assistant C in dy C larksonM ix e r D ave U p so nS tu n ts co o rd in a to r R o b G reen o u g h Still p h o to g rap h y Skip W atkinsD ia lo g u e co a ch A n n ie M u rta g h -M o n k sW ran g ler R o b G reen o u g h

Jo h n M cG u ck in B e st boys D avid C ross

Jo sep h M ercu rio Phil M u lligan

R u n n er S tu a rt P o lk in g h o rn eR u n n er (art d ep t) H ele n F in chC a te rin g B ig Belly BusS tu d ios S o u n d stag e A ustraliaM ixed a t T rack sL ab o rato ry M o v ielabL ab . liaison Kelvin C ru m p linT u to r/ ch a p e ro n e D im ity M allo chB u d g et S 2 .3 m illionG aug e 16 m mS h o o tin g sto ck K odak E a stm a n co lo r

7 2 9 1 , 7 2 9 1L e n g th 12 x 3 0 m insC a s t : D aren Kelly (M ark C arm ich ae l), D en ise V o se (R e b e c ca S im m o n s), Brayden W est (S ean C a rm ich a e l), S h a n n o n A rm ­stro n g (L in d a C a rm ich a e l), B a rth o lo m ew Jo h n (Jo h n C a rm ich a e l), A n n ie M u rtag h - M o n k s (A nnie C arm ich ae l), R o b e rt van M a ck e len b erg (P e rn ' S im m o n s), V ivienne G arrett (Jill S im m o n s), B o b F a g g etter (B lair S w een ey ), O w en Sh ek els (K evin B ick le ). S y n o p s is : T h e C arm ichaels, an o ld W e st­ern A ustralian fam ily proud o f th eir p io ­n eerin g foreb ears, clash w ith th e ‘back to basics’ c ity -b red (an d in tern ation al back ­g ro u n d ) fam ily w h o buy th e n eig h b o u rin g farm . T h e results are b o th funny and dra­m atic as th e various person alities so rt o u t th eir p rio rities, relationship s and respective in terests . A h u m o ro u s , co n tem p o rary ‘k idadu lt’ adventure series.

HEY DAD ...!Prod . co . Gan,' R eilly P rod u ctio n sD io st. co m p an y A T NP ro d u cer G ary R eillyD ire c to r - Sally BradyScrip tw riters G ary Reilly

Jo h n F lan agan Kym G oldsw orth y

Ian R o ch fo rd K en M atth ew s

N eil Stew art Jo a n Flanagan

F ro m the idea by Gary' ReillyJo h n F lanagan

So u n d reco rd ist J im A stleyE d itors G arry Bu rn s

A n n e F le ttProd , d esign er K en G o o d m a nC o m p o se r M ik e Perjan ikE x ec , p ro d u cer Gary' ReillyF lo o r m an ag er Jam ie Stevens

P ro d u ce r’s asst. Ja n e E liz a b e th O g d e n C astin g L iz M u llin arA rt d irec to r S teve M u irM ak e-u p V ey atie H u rstW ard ro b e H ele n L lo ydW ard ro b e assistant M ich e lle Jau linProp s G o rd o n B ro w nS tan d b y p rop s D avid K in gL e n g th 2 2 x 3 0 m in utesG au g e 1 " v ideoC a s t : R o b e r t H u g h es (M a rtin K elly ), Ju lie M c G re g o r (B e tty W ilso n ), S im o n B u c h a ­nan ( D e b b ie K elly ), Sarah M o n a h a n (Jen n y K elly ), C h ris to p h er T ru sw ell (N u d g e ), C h ris to p h er M ay er (S im o n K elly). S y n o p s is : S itu a tio n co m ed y a b o u t a w id­ow ed fa th er tryin g to raise his ch ild ren w ith th e help o f th e fam ily’s crazy co usin .

HOME AND AWAYP ro d , co m p an y A T N C h an n el 7D ist. co m p an y A T N C h an n el 7P ro d u ce r A n drew H ow ieD ire cto rs variousScrip tw riters variousBased o n idea by A lan B atem anE d ito r T erry C o m b sProd , design er Jo h n C arrollC o m p o se r M ik e P erjan ikE x e c , p ro d u cer D es M o n a g h a nP ro d , c o -o rd in a to r Lynda BurkeP ro d , m an ag er P e te r C o rn yP ro d , secretary Ed w ina SearleP ro d , a cc o u n ta n t T h e re se T ra nP ro d , assistant T o n y B ro d erick1st asst d irectors Sh an e G ow

G ra n t B row n C a th ie R o d en

2 n d asst d irectors P e te r PearceA lex T in ley

C o n tin u ity F ran ces Sw anM arcu s G eo rg iades

L iz PerryC astin g co o rd in a to r In ese V o g lerC astin g co n su ltan ts M au ra Fay

and A ssoc.C o stu m e design er L u cin d a W h iteM ak e-u p M ary G eo rg io u

D avid Jen n in g s H airdressers G eo rg in a B u sh

Paul W illiam s W ard ro b e L in dy W ylieW ard ro b e assts R ita C ro u ch

F ran cesca B a th Prop s ru n ners Jim Fayle

B e n H eapsProp s buyers. Philip C u m m in g

K ate Saunders S e t d e co ra to r G len n T u rn e rS e t co n stru c tio n G reg M u rp h yC a s t : R o g e r O akley (T o m ) , V anessaD ow n in g (P ip p a), Sharyn H o d g so n (C arly ), A dam W illits (S te v e n ), K ate R itch ie (Sally ), N ico lle D ick so n (B o b b y ), F io n a Sp ence (C e lia ), N orm an C o b u rn (F ish e r), C raig T h o m so n (M a r tin ), Judy N u n n (A ilsa), Ray M e a g h er (A lf), P e ter V ro o m (L a n ce ). S y n o p s is : A w arm and am usin g fam ily dram a set in th e fictio n al seaside tow n o f Su m m er Bay.

JACK THOMPSON’S AUSTRALIAProd , co m p an y G reat S ou th lan d

P ro d u ctio n sD ist. co m p an y B ey o n d In tern atio n al

G rou pProd u cers M a tth ew F lanagan

Jo h n L u sco m b e D ire c to r M a tth ew F lanaganScrip tw riters Ju lie M iller

B ill E d m o n d s Ray Sinclair

N arrator Ja ck T h o m p so nL e n g th 2 6 x 1 h ou rG au g e 1 6 m mS y n o p s is : Jack Thompson Down Under is a b o u t th e A ustralia and A ustralians Ja ck loves best: th o se w h o ch allen g e th e c o u n ­try, w h o dare to ach ieve, w h o seek adven­tu re. Ja ck T h o m p so n hosts and narrates this 2 6 -p a rt series w h ich covers every in ­co n ceiv ab le en v iro n m en t and a h o st o f

A ustralian ch aracters. T h e sto ries are cu lled fro m th e b e st th a t A u stralian p ro d u ctio n team s have b e en ab le to cap ture.

NEIGHBOURSP ro d , co m p an y G ru n d y T elev isio nP ro d u ce r M ark C allanD ire cto rs V ariou sScrip tw riters V ariou sB ased o n idea by R e g W atso nS o u n d reco rd ists P e te r Say

G ra n t V o g le r B ru ce F indlay

P ro d , d esign er Steve K ellerC o m p o se r ( th e m e ) T o n y H a tchE x e c , p ro d u cer D o n B attyeE x e c in ch arge o f p rod . P e te r P in n eP ro d , co -o rd in a to r R e ita W ilsonP ro d , m an ag er S tew art W rig h tL o ca tio n m an ag er B o b V illin g erA sst d irecto rs H ow ard N eil

D o n L in k e M ark F arr

C astin g Ja n RussM ich e lle L u v isetto

C am era o p erators Jo e B attag liaJ e f f B ig g s

A n d rew C u rrie A n drew Berry

Paul B a rn ett M ark C o llin s

M a rk A llen P e te r H in d

S crip t supervisor R ay K o lleS to ry ed ito r W ayne D oy leS crip t ed ito r L o is B o o to nS to ry liners C h ered ith M o k

Ja so n D an ielD ire c to rs ’ assts L in d a W alker

Ja n e D an iels C h ristin e Lipari

F lo o r m an ag ers R ay LindsayM ark H a n co c k

A lan W illiam son T e c h , d irectors H ow ard Sim m o n s

P e te r M arin o B arry Shaw

P e te r C o eL ig h tin g supers S tu a rt de Y o u n g

R o d H a rb o u rM ak e-u p W illiam M cllv a n e y

D allas S tep h en s H airdressers M ich ael L o n g h ita n o

Paul P attiso nW ard ro b e M an d y Sedew ie

Ju lian n e Jo n a s G ursel Ali

Prop s bu yer M ark G rivasStan d b y props Su e B ir jak

R o b T resiz eM u sic ed ito r W arren PearsonO fflin e ed itin g T h e E d itin g M ach in e V isio n sw itch in g Jen n y W illiam sP o st-p ro d u ctio n A T V 1 0 M e lb o u rn eR u n n e r T im D isneyT u to r San d ra B u rrittC aterin g . H ele n Louw ersP o st-p ro d u ctio n A T V -1 0 M e lb o u rn eC a s t : A n n e C h arlesto n (M a d g e B ish o p ), A lan D ale (Jim R o b in so n ), Shauna O ’Grady (B ev erly R o b in s o n ), A n n e H addy (H e le n D a n ie ls ), S te fan D en n is (Pau l R o b in s o n ), F io n a C o rk e (G ail R o b in s o n ), D es C larke (Pau l K e a n e ), G uy Pearce (M a rk Y o u n g ), A n n ie Jo n e s (Ja n e H arris), Ian S m ith (H a ro ld S m ith ) , K ristian S ch m id (T o d d L an d ers), Sally Jen se n (K atie L an d ers). S y n o p s is : Lo v e ‘em o r h ate ‘em , b u t every­o n e ’s g o t ‘em : n e ig h b o u rs . R am say S tr e e t ...th e stage fo r an ex c itin g dram a seria l...d raw in g back th e cu rtain to reveal th e in trig u e and passions o f A ustralian fam ilies ...an d th eir n eig h b o u rs.

POST PRODUCTION

ADVENTURES ON KYTHERA IIP ro d , co m p an y M ed ia W o rld P ty L td D ist. co n p an y R ich ard P rice

T elev isio n A ssociates Prod u cers Jo h n T a to u lis

D ire c to r Scrip tw riter S o u n d reco rd ist E d ito r C o m p o se r A sso c, p ro d u cer P ro d , m an ag er U n it m an ag er

C o lin S o u th Jo h n T a to u lis

D e b o ra h Parson s Jo h n W ilk in so n M ic h a e l C o llin s

T a sso s Io a n n id es T a sso s Io a n n id es

Y v o n n e C o llin s T a n ia P e te rn o s tro

P ro d , secretary F ran ces S h ep h erd so n P ro d , assistant G e o rg ia H ew so n1 st asst d irec to r Son y a P e m b e rto nC am era o p era to r H arry P an ag iotisK ey grip F re d d o D irkB o o m o p era to r G reg N elso nA rt d irec to r P h il C h am b ersW ard ro b e L illy C h o rn yStill p h o to g ra p h y B illy C h ap m anP u b licity Paul S im eT u to r Ju d y M a lm g re nL e n g th 6 x 3 0 m in u tesG aug e S P B e ta ca mC a s t : R eb ek a h E lm a lo g lo u (T ik ) , Z e n to n C h o rn y (Z e o n to n ) , A m elia F rid (M o ly ), G arry P era z z o (S p ik e), G eo rg e Lekkas ( Jo h n n y ), R ich ard A spel ( Jo h n n y ), T asso s Io a n n id es (P h ilip p as).S y n o p s is : Adventures on Kythera IHs a six- p art series w h ich follow s th e an tics and adventures o f five ch ild ren w h o , th ro u g h unusual c ircu m stan ces, m e e t up again o n th e G reek island o f K y th era . T h e y em b ark o n a variety o f escapades th a t b rin g th em in to co n ta c t w ith n ew frien ds, unusual cu sto m s an d ex c itin g places.

THE DRUM MACHINEP ro d , co m p an y In d ep e n d en t Im a g e

P ro d u ctio n s/ S B S T V P ro d u ce r Ju a n Jaram illoD ire c to r Ju a n Jaram illoScrip tw riters Ju a n Jaram illo

M ich a el R ayan P h o to g ra p h y R ey C arlso nS o u n d reco rd ist K evin K earneyE d ito r M ark W ynyardP ro d , d esign er R e b e cca C o h e nC o m p o sers S a o c oE x e c , p ro d u cer B arb ara M a rio ttiProd , m an ag er Jo h n P a ch itoC o n tin u ity L o u ise W illisK ey grip P e te r Ledgw ay2 n d u n it cam era M ark P id co ckG affer G rah am D ick so nB o o m o p era to r A n d rew D al B o scoM ak e-u p C aro lin e Z o e V iesn ikN eg m a tch in g M ary lin D ealn e

(N eg ativ e C u ttin g Serv ice) M u sic p erfo rm ed by S a o c oStill p h o to g rap h y P atricia Jaram illoC a te rin g G racie la D o u sd eb esM ix ed at S B S T VL ab o ra to ry T h e V id eo F ilm

C o m p an yL ab . liaison M ark F arrarB u d g e t $ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0L e n g th 5 8 m in u tesG au g e S u p er 1 6S h o o tin g sto ck F u ji 8 5 2 1C a s t : D o u g S cro o p e (ad v ertisin g e x e cu ­tiv e), G u stav o C e re ijo (h im se lf), Ju lio C e re ijo (h im self), L e o V ela sq u ez (h im ­se lf), S erg io M u le t (h im se lf), N e s to r R o - san o (h im self), L u cia n o G aitan (h im se lf), M ik e R yan (h im se lf), P e te r G u arin o (h im ­se lf), Jo h n F ie ld in g (h im self).S y n o p s is : A salsa ban d faces th e d ilem m a o f co m p ro m isin g th e ir m u sic fo r th e sake o f fam e.

P ro d , co m p an y

P ro d u cer D ire c to r Scrip tw riter B ased o n idea by

P h o to g rap h y S o u n d reco rd ist E d ito rProd , design er

FLAIRF la ir T elev isio n

P ro d u ctio n P ty L td Paul D avies

H en ri Safran A lan H o p g o o d

Pau l D avies G aye H o p g o o d

N in o G . M a rtin e tti Jo h n W ilk in so n

R ich ard H in d ley D avid C o p p in g

78 N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

C o m p o se r A sso c, p ro d u cer P ro d , c o o rd in a to r P ro d , m an ag er U n it m an ag er U n it m an ag er asst. L o c a tio n m an ag er P ro d , secretary P ro d , a cc o u n ta n t A cco u n ts assistant 1 s t asst d irecto r 2 n d asst d irecto r 3 rd asst d irecto r C o n tin u ity C a stin g d irecto r C am era o p era to r 2 n d u n it cam era 2 n d u n it fo cu s puller 3 rd electrics Safety supervisor C o n stru c tio n m g r A sst co n stru c tio n m g r C o n stru c tio n assts

A c tio n v eh icle co o rdA rm o u rerF o c u s p ullerC lap p er load erK ey gripA sst gripG afferB o o m o p era to r A rt d irecto r C o stu m e design er M a k e-u p super.

F ra n k S tra n g io L y n n e D avies

C h ristin e H a rt Basil A pp leby

M ich a e l B a tc h e lo r S tev e B re tt

Paul H ealey M arin a M an sfie ld

Jim H a jico sta M ary M akris D avid C larke T rish C arn ey

C aro lin e G ro se Jo a n n e M c L e n n a n

L e e L a m e r N in o G . M a rtin e tti

B ren d a n Lavelle D avid L indsey G u y H a n co c k

A rch ie R o b e rts Jo h n P arker

Ia n D o ig W ill D av idson S tev en M a m o R o b M c L e o d

M ich a e l W arw ick W arw ick F ie ld

K ath y C h am bers K en C o n n o r

A lista ir R eilly M ich a el M a to

G reg N elso n C a ro le H arvey

A n n a S en io r V iv ien n e M cG illicu d d y

M a k e -u p assistant F io n a G rah amH aird resser S tep h en M a h o n ey

W ard ro b e b u yer/ supervisor F ran k ie H o g e nW a rd ro b e assts C h ristin e D aives

A n n a W adeS tan d b y w ard ro be Pau la E k erickProp s bu yer D aryl M illsS tan d b y p rop s C h ris Jam esS e t d resser T rish a K eatin gSp ecial e ffects B rian PearceS e t d e co ra to r T rish a K eatin gC arp en ters A n drew C h ark er

J im G an n o nS tu n ts c o o rd in a to r G len R u eh lan dStill p h o to g rap h y D av id B . S im m o n d s W ran g ler W ally D a lto nB e s t bo y N ick PayneR u n n e r M arcu s H u n tU n it p u b licist T o n y Jo h n sto nC a te rin g D avid & C assie V aileC a s t : H e a th e r T h o m a s , A n drew C lark e , Ja m es H ea le y , R o w en a W a lla ce , Im o g e n A n n esley , C h arles T in g w e ll, D av id R eyn e. S y n o p s is : T h e re tu rn o f beau tifu l fashion d esign er T essa C lark e to h er native A u stra­lia is th e cataly st fo r a co ck ta il o f lov e , jea lo u sy an d d ece it . A trag ic fire , a self­d estru ctiv e y o u n g er sister and tw o lovers - o n e a p ow erfu l y e t m ysterious ty co o n , th e o th e r a h an d som e b u t flaw ed g o -g e t te r - cau se a cau ld ro n o f e m o tio n s to eru p t in to m urd er.

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(03) 429 5511

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P G ( P A R E N T A L G U I D A N C E ) B a c h e lo r ’s S w a n S o n g , T h e (m ain tide n o t show n in E n g lish ): B o H o F ilm s/ M o b ile F ilm P ro d u ctio n s , H o n g K o n g , 9 5 m in s, C h in ato w n C in em a , 0 (a d u lt c o n ­cep ts)B r e n d a S ta r r : M . H y m an , U S A , 9 3 m ins, V illag e R o ad sh o w , L ( i - l - j ) V ( i - l - j )E a r th G ir ls a re E a sy : T . G a rn ett, U S A , 1 0 0 m in s, H o y ts , L ( i - l - g ) 0 (s e x u a l allu ­sions)In d ia n a Jo n e s a n d th e L a s t C ru sa d e : R . W atts , U S A , 1 2 5 m in s, U I P , V ( f - l - j ) L a C a s a d e B e m a r d a A lb a : P araiso/ Tvesa, Sp ain , 1 0 0 m ins, H o y ts , 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts) L a w r e n c e o f A r a b ia : S. S p ieg e l, U K , 2 1 5 m in , F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S t a r ,V ( i - l - j ) M in n a m u r r a (aka O u tb a c k ) : J . S ex to n , A ustralia , 9 2 m in s, Jo h n S e x to n P ro d u c­tio n s, V ( i - l - j )S h e ’s O u t o f C o n t r o l : S. D eu tsch , U S A ,9 5 m in s, H o y ts , O Jsex u al allusion s, adult co n cep ts)S u m m e r V a c a t io n - 1 9 9 9 : Yutaka O k ada/ E iji K ish i, Ja p a n , 8 8 m in s , R o n in , O Ja d o le sc en t co n cep ts)Y o u n g T o s c a n in i : F . L u cisa n a / T . A m - m ar, Ita ly / F ra n ce , 1 0 6 m ins, F ilm p ac, 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts)

M ( M A T U R E A U D I E N C E S )8 4 C M o p ic : M . N o lin , U S A , 9 5 m ins. Palace, L ( f -m - j) V (i-m - j)B l in d F u ry : D . G ro d n ick / T . M a th e so n , U S A , 8 9 m ins, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S ta r , L (i- m -g ) V (f-m -g )F a c e s : M . M c E n d re e , U S A , 1 2 6 m in s, A F I (S y d n ey ), 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts)G le a m in g th e C u b e : L . T u rm a n / D . F o s ­te r , U S A , 1 0 4 m in s, F ilm p ac, V ( i-m - j) L (i- m -g ) O Jim ita b le stu n ts)H a n u s s e n (ed ited v ersio n ): A . B rau n er, A u stria/ H u n g ary , 1 1 3 m ins. F o x C o lu m ­b ia -T ri S ta r , V ( i-m - j) 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts) K in g o f S ta n le y M a r k e t (m ain title n o t show n in E n g lish ): J . S h a m , H o n g K o n g ,9 6 m in s, C h in atow n C in em a , V (i-m -g ) L (i-m -g )L e v ia th a n : L . D e L au ren d is/ A . D e Lau- ren tiis , U S A , 9 5 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S tar , O (h o rro r) L (i-m -g ) V (i-m -g )L o v e r B o y : D . S ch arf, A ustralia , 5 8 m ins, A F I (M e lb o u rn e ), L ( i-m -j) S ( i -m -j) V (i- m -j) 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts)M ilw r B y c h a n ( B o y S o ld ie r ) : K . F ran cis/ H . P ierce , U K , 9 9 m ins, N ation al L ibrary o f A ustralia , V (i-m - j) L ( i-m -j)M y N e w C a r : R . L aw ren ce , U S A , 7 8 m ins,

U I P , 0 (s e x u a l a llusions)O p e r a t io n P in k S q u a d I I : H o i W o n g , H o n g K o n g , 9 1 m in s, Y u E n terp rises , V (f- m -g ) 0 ( h o r r o r , sexual allusions)P a r is B y N ig h t : P. C assavetti, U K , 1 0 1 m in s, C E L , L (i-m - j) S ( i -m -j)P e t S e m a ta ry : R . R u b in ste in , U S A , 1 0 2 m in s, U I P , V (i-m -g ) O (h o rro r)R a in b o w , T h e : K . R u ssell, U K , 1 1 0 m in s, V estro n A ustralia , S ( i -m -j) V ( i-m - j)S a y A n y th in g .. . : P. P la tt, U S A , 1 0 0 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S ta r , L ( i-m -g ) 0 (a d u lt co n cep ts)S c a n d a l: S . W o o lley , U K , 1 1 4 m in s, C E L , S ( i-m - j) 0 ( d r u g use)T a l l G u y , T h e : P. W eb ster , U K , 9 2 m in s, N ew v ision , S ( i-m -g ) L (i-m -g )W h o ’s H a r r y C ru m b ? : A . M ilch a n , U S A / C an ada, 8 9 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri Star, L ( i-m -g ) 0 (s e x u a l a llusions)

R ( R E S T R I C T E D E X H I B I T I O N ) C y b o rg : M . G o lan / Y . G lo b u s, U S A , 8 5 m in s, H o y ts , V (f-m -g )D o m in o : G . D i C le m e n te , Ita ly , 1 0 0 m ins, V illag e R o ad sh o w , S ( i-m -g )G u n m e n : Isui H ark , H o n g K o n g , 8 7 m ins, C h in ato w n C in em a , V (f-m -g )I n th e L in e o f D u ty I I I : S . S h in , H o n g K o n g , 8 3 m in s, C h in ato w n C in em a , V (f- m -g ) S (i- l-g )M a n ife s to : M . G o la n / Y . G lo b u s , U S A / Y ugoslavia, 9 7 m in s, H o y ts , S ( i- l-g ) V (i-m - g ) 0 (a d u lt co n cep ts)

F I L M S R E F U S E D R E G I S T R A T I O N C h r is ty C a n y o n S ta r r in g in a G o u r m e t Q u ic k ie : G o u rm et V id eo C o lle c tio n , U S A , 2 9 m in s, G .R . H ill, S (f -h -g )

S P E C I A L C O N D I T I O N S• n o t to be ex h ib ited in any S ta te in c o n tra ­v en tio n o f th at S ta te ’s law re latin g to th e exh ib itio n o f films• ex h ib ited only at the fo llo w in g venues betw een 9 M ay 1 9 8 9 and 18 M ay 1 9 8 9 (b o th dates inclusive) and n o t o therw ise: -M e d ia D ep a rtm en t, I^ aT ro be U n iversity , M elb o u rn e-V is u a l Arts D ep a rtm en t, M o n a sh U n iv er­sity , M e lb o u rn e- M edia D ep a rtm en t, V ic to r ia C o lle g e , R u sd en C am p u s, M e lb o u rn e- M ed ia D ep a rtm en t, F lind ers U niversity', A delaide• exp orted w ith in the six-w eek p eriod co m m en cin g o n 1 8 M av 1 9 8 9 .

E x i t S u n s e t B o u le v a r d : B . C lev e , W est G erm an y , 9 4 m in s, G o e th e -In s titu t H y s te r i-A J le rg ie u n d F ie b e r m it e in e m

N a c h s a tz : B . BustorfF , W est G erm an y , 55 m ins, G o e th e -In s titu t L o v e S t in k s : B irg it/ W . H e in , W e st G e r­m any, 8 2 m in s, G o e th e -In s titu t N o r m a ls a tz : H . E m ig h o lz , W est G erm any', 1 0 5 m in s, G o e th e -In s titu t U lisse s : W . N ek es ,W e st G erm an y , 9 4 m ins, G o e th e -In s titu t

J U N E 1 9 8 9

G ( G E N E R A L E X H I B I T I O N ) G re e n T e a a n d C h e r r y R ip e : K . F o le y , S . H o a a s , A ustralia , 5 5 m in s, R o n in

P G ( P A R E N T A L G U I D A N C E ) A g a in s t th e In n o c e n t : R . Jo n e s , A ustralia , 7 7 m in s, A F I (M e lb o u rn e ), O Ja d u lt c o n ­cep ts)B a tm a n : J . P e te rs/ P . G u b e r, U S A / U K , 1 2 5 m in s, V illag e R o ad sh o w , V (f - l- j) B e lo v e d S o n o f G o d , T h e (m ain tid e n o t sh ow n in E n g lish ): M o v ie Im p a ct, H o n g K o n g , 9 2 m in s, C h in ato w n C in em a, V (i- m -j) 0 (a d u lt co n cep ts)C a n n o n b a ll F e v e r : M . S h o stak , U S A , 9 4 m in s, V illag e R o ad sh o w , O Ja n ti-so cia l beh av io u r, sexual a llusions)C o v e ru p B e h in d th e I r a n C o n t r a A ffa ir : B . T re n t/ G . M a y e r/ D . K asper, U S A , 7 4 m in s, R o n in , V (i-m - j)D e a d P o e ts S o c ie ty : S . H a ft/ P . W itt/ T . T h o m a s , U S A , 1 2 8 m in s, V illag e R o a d ­show , V ( i-m - j) 0 (a d o le s c e n t co n cep ts) G o ld e n E ig h t ie s : M . M arig n a c , F ra n ce , 9 6 m in s, U rb a n E ye R e leasin g , L (i-m -g ) 0 (s e x u a l a llusions)S k y g g e n o f E m m a (E m m a ’s S h a d o w ): T . M ag n u sso n , D en m ark , 9 5 m ins, Film pac, 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts)S ta r T r e k V T h e F in a l F r o n t ie r : H . B e n n e tt, U S A , 1 0 6 m in s, U I P , V ( i- l- j) O Ja d u lt co n cep ts)T r o o p B e v e r ly H il ls : A . F ries, U S A , 1 0 2 m in s, H o y ts , L ( i- l -g ) 0 (a d u lt co n cep ts)

M ( M A T U R E A U D I E N C E S ) B e e th o v e n ’s N ep h ew ': M . C o u ste t , W est G erm an y '/ Fran ce, 1 0 3 m in s, V illag e R o a d ­show', S ( i-m -g )V ( i-m -g ) 0 ( adu lt co n cep ts) B lo n d e F u r y , T h e ( m ain t id e n o t sh ow n in E n g lish ): B o H o F ilm s, H o n g K o n g , 8 5 m in s, C hinatow n C in em a , V (f-m -g ) C lo s e r a n d C lo s e r A p a r t: R . C o lo s im o , A ustralia, 8 6 m in s, R osa C o lo s im o , 0 (a d u lt co n cep ts) S ( i-m -j)C o m m u n io n : W . S tr ie b e r/ P . M o ra / D . A llin g h am , U S A , 1 0 8 m in s, V e s tro n , L (i- m -g )

D is o r g a n iz e d C r im e : L . B ig e lo w , U S A , 1 0 1 m in s, V illag e R o a d sh o w , L (i-m -g ) O Ja d u lt co n cep ts)D r y W h ite S e a s o n , A : P . W ein ste in , U S A , 1 0 6 m in s, U I P , V (f -m - j) L ( i-m - j) F a ith fu lly Y o u r s (m ain tid e n o t sh ow n in E n g lish ): H o n g K o n g , 9 1 m in s, C h in a ­tow n C in em a , O Ja d u lt co n cep ts)F i r s t T im e is th e L a s t T im e , T h e (m ain title n o t sh ow n in E n g lish ): Sev en M M F ilm P ro d u ctio n , H o n g K o n g , 9 0 m in s, Yu E n terp rises , V (f -m -g )G e t t in g I t R ig h t : J . K ra n e / R . K le iser, U K , 1 0 1 m in s, V illag e R o a d sh o w , L ( i-m - j) O Ja d u lt co n cep ts)G ir l f r ie n d F r o m H e l l : A . L e n s i/ D . P e te r ­so n , U S A , 9 2 m in s, V illag e R o a d sh o w , V (f -m -g ) L (i-m -g ) O Ja d u lt co n cep ts h o r­ro r)H ig h H o p e s : V . G ly n n / S . C h a n n in g - W illiam s, U K , 1 1 2 m in s , N ew v isio n , L (i- m -j) O Jd ru g u se)H o ld M y H a n d , I ’m D y in g : M . C assidy, U K , 1 0 9 m in s, F ilm p a c, L (i-m -g ) V ( i-m - j) S ( i-m -g )J ig s a w : R . C o lo s im o , A u stralia , 8 6 m in s, R o sa C o lo s im o , V ( i-m - j) L ( i-m -g )K - 9 : L . G o rd o n / C . G o rd o n , U S A , 1 0 1 m in s, U I P , V ( i-m -g ) 0 ( a d u lt co n cep ts) K itc h e n T o t o , T h e : A . S k in n e r, U K , 9 2 m in s, H oy'ts, V ( i-m - j) S ( i-m - j)L a L e c tr ic e : M . D ev ille/ R . D ev ille , F ran ce , 9 8 m in s, N ew v ision , S ( i-m - j) L ( i-m - j) L ic e n c e to K i l l : A . B r o c c o li/ M . W ilso n , U K , 1 3 2 m in s, U I P , V (f-m -g )M a jo r L e a g u e : C . C h esse r/ I. S m ith , U S A , 1 0 6 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S ta r , L (f-m -

g )M ir a c le M ile : J . D aly '/ D . G ib so n , U S A , 8 7 m in s, H oy 'ts, V ( i-m -g ) L ( f -m -g ) P a t h f in d e r : J . Ja c o b se n , N orw ay, 8 6 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S ta r , V ( i-m - j) R o m a n t ic G h o s t S to r y : H o n g K o n g M a n W ah F ilm s C o m p a n y , H o n g K o n g , 8 8 m in s, Yu E n terp rises , O (h o rro r) S ( i-m -g ) R o m e r o : E . K ie s e r , U S A / M e x ic o , 1 0 2 m in s, F ilm p a c, V ( i-m - j)S e e N o E v il , H e a r N o E v il : M . W o rth , U S A , 1 0 1 m in s, F o x C o lu m b ia -T ri S ta r , L ( f -m -g ) V ( i-m -g )S ie g e o f F ire b a s e G lo r ia ,T h e : H . G rig sby / R . C o n fe so r , U S A / A u stra lia , 1 0 0 m in s, H o y ts , V ( f -m - j) L ( f -m -g )S t in g I n t h e T a le , A : R . C o lo s im o / R . M c L e a n , A u s tra lia , 9 3 m in s , R o s a C o lo s im o , S ( i-m -j)

R ( R E S T R I C T E D E X H I B I T I O N ) B u r n in g A m b it io n : Y u S u / F . C h a n , h o n g K o n g , 9 7 m in s,Y u E n te rp rise s , V (f -m -g ) D o T h e R i g h t T h in g : S . L e e , U S A , 1 1 9 m in s, U I P , L ( f -m -g )D r Je k y l l 8c M r H y d e : E . S im o n s/ H . T o w e rs , U K / H u n g a ry , 8 7 m in s, V illag e R oadshow ', S ( i-m -g ) V ( i-m -g )K ic k B o x e r : M . D i S a lle , U S A , 1 0 2 m in s, P a lace , V (f-m -g )R o a d h o u s e : J . S ilv er, U S A , 1 1 3 m in s, U I P , V (f-m -g )

R o a d h o u s e (E d ite d V e rs io n ): J . S ilv er, U S A , 1 1 2 m in s, U I P , V (f -m -g )W ire d : E . F e ld m a n / C . M e e k e r, U S A , 1 0 9 m in s, V illag e R o a d sh o w , 0 ( d r u g ab u se)

F I L M S R E F U S E D R E G I S T R A T I O N D e v il I n M is s Jo n e s 3 - A N e w B e g in n in g , T h e : G . D a rk , U S A , 7 6 m in s, A . N ew m a n , S (f-h -g )

Films examined in terms of the Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations as States’ film censorship legislation are listed below. An explanatory key to reasons for classifying non-”G" films appears hereunder:

Frequency Explicitness/Intensity PurposeInfrequent Frequent Low Medium High Jusdfied Gratuitous

S(Sex) i f 1 m h j gV (Violence) i f 1 m h j gL(Language) i f 1 m h j gO (Other) i f I m h j g

Title Producer Country' Submitted length Applicant Reason for decision

CINEMA PAPERS #76 ON SALE 1 NI0VEMBER% ^ 1 VcV ' -

8 0 C I N E M A P A P E R S 7 5

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After 100 years of making motion picture film, Eastman Kodak Company ushers in a new era of creative freedom.

Introducing the family of Eastman EXR extended-range colour negative motion picture films.

Films that offer exceptionally wide exposure latitudes and increased range of speeds.

Films that offer you freedom to shoot in bright or dim lighting

conditions. From daylight to tung­sten, HMI, or even fluorescent illumination.

Films that are not only more light sensitive, but provide better colour sharpness, and finer grain.

Films, in short, that extend the vision of every cinematog­rapher and director Opening new doors. Creating new possibilities.

Because at Eastman we believe your imagination should know no bounds.

Now being introduced:EXR 5296 film: El 500 Tungsten in 35 mm EXR 7248 film: El 100 Tungsten in 16 mm EXR 5245 film: El 50 Daylight in 35 mm EXR 7245 film: El 50 Daylight in 16 mmKodak, Eastman, EXR, 5296, 7248,5245 and 7245 are trademarks. © Eastman Kodak Company, 1989

For further information please contact Kodak (Australasia) Pty Ltd

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